


Apophenia

by EriksChampion



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Existential Angst, M/M, Multi, Psychological Warfare, Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-20 17:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 58,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1519628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EriksChampion/pseuds/EriksChampion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Change is never easy. Unfortunately, neither is staying the same. In the wake of Atem's departure Jounouchi struggles to keep his family together while Kaiba fears that his life is beginning to fall apart. Things quickly spiral out of control once their journeys intersect and both, for the first time, see things as they truly are. Post-canon, eventual SxJ with many others implied</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Keep On Running Till the Well Run Dry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title for this chapter comes from the song Saint John by Cold War Kids

Apophenia – seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data

* * *

 

Five years later, Seto finally replaced the portrait in the hall. Yet another piece of evidence, he thought to himself as he aligned the mountings and hammered the nails, that if he wanted something done correctly he would have to do it himself.

Five months earlier , he had entered the Kame Game Shop for what he had thought was the final time, and through the unlikely chain of events that had transpired as a result, that sentiment had been proven to be almost entirely incorrect.

* * *

“Don’t you take one step closer, boy! Keep your hands where I can see them! I’ll have you know that I’m one false move away from triggering a silent alarm that will have the full force of the Domino City police here in moments!”

Seto rolled his eyes as he gently placed his briefcase on the floor and shrugged off his trench coat. “I hope you realize that announcing that you’re about to trigger a silent alarm completely misses the point,” he seethed. “But for your information I’m not here to cause any trouble.”

“I’d have to be a fool to fall for that one,” Soloman snorted.

“Then this shouldn’t be too difficult for you to follow,” Seto muttered. “Look. If you would just calm down and listen to me—“

“Thugs, thieves, and hooligans are not, and never will be, welcome in my establishment!” Soloman gestured to a line of pictures lining the line behind him, over which the word ‘BANNED’ was scrawled in bold red letters. Studying the images, Seto could see that they were composed primarily of stills of overly enlarged and painfully pixelated security camera footage of shoplifters and vandals. And among them, situated directly below the first ‘N’ in ‘BANNED ,’ sat Seto’s own smugly smiling face, encased in a wreath of lime green bangs.

“That’s not even a recent picture,” he muttered, mostly to himself .

“I’ve reported and locked up more of you delinquents than you can shake a stick at, and unless you want to join them, I suggest—“

“Grandpa? Is everything okay?” Yuugi came rushing in from the back room, eyes wide with concern, with Jounouchi following closely behind him.

“Everything is fine.” Kaiba insisted. “If your buffoon of a grandfather would just listen—“

“Oh, I’m the buffoon?!” Soloman cried. “I’m not the one who had the audacity to show his face in this establishment after robbing me blind—I haven’t forgotten about that you know!” He waved a menacing finger in Kaiba’s direction.

“I noticed.”

“Grandpa, Kaiba-kun is our friend now.” Yuugi began cautiously. “He wouldn’t dream of harming any of your treasures now.”

“And besides, if he does we’ll punch his face in for you, Grandpa,” Jounouchi added. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

Soloman took a moment to consider, fixing his gaze alternatively on Yuugi’s appeasing face, Jounouchi’s devilish grin, and Kaiba’s tensed jaw and shoulders.

“Well, I suppose just this once,” he conceded, turning to face Kaiba directly. “What brings you in here today, son?”

“I’d prefer to do this without an audience,” Seto muttered stiffly.

“Hey, anything you want to say to Yuugi’s grandpa you can say in front of us,” Jounouchi snapped.

“Fine.” Seto retrieved his briefcase and took a few icy steps forward, gaze occasionally flickering over Soloman’s shoulder to Yuugi and Jounouchi, who were regarding him with open curiosity. He gingerly set his briefcase on the glass countertop, and with a few precisely measured flicks of his fingers the steel clasps popped open with a satisfying click.

Soloman, Yuugi, and Jounouchi gawked when the contents of the case revealed themselves. Inside, glowing with the warmth of gold and the dazzle of jewels , was nestled what they had to imagine was the better part of Kaiba’s Duel Monsters card collection, with his three Blue Eyes poised like a soft fall of crystalline snow on the top.

“These—are for you,” Kaiba mumbled, shifting the weight distribution among his feet.

“I can’t possibly accept this!” Soloman exclaimed. “And if you think this makes up for you destroying my Blue Eyes, you can forget it! That card was of priceless sentimental value.”

“I know.” Kaiba muttered. “I…understand . Look, just take them, okay?!” Noting that his tone had grown somewhat harsher than he had intended , he added, “I want you to have them.”

“I-I couldn’t possibly!” Soloman cried as he made a move to shove the briefcase away.

“Hey, wait a second there, Gramps,” Jounouchi interjected as he took a step closer to examine the cards in greater detail. “Think about what you’re saying no to here. These must be worth a fortune !”

“Oh, I’m sure they are. But that’s not the point here,” Soloman replied. “I would never dream of selling these cards. But you,” he turned to Seto, “You can’t be seriously contemplating parting with these cards. A dragon could sooner renounce its scales! They’re a vestige of your soul—“

“Not anymore .” Seto retorted, earning him incredulous stares from all three. “Please just take them and spare me the diatribe.”

Seeing that his grandfather was at a loss for words, Yuugi stepped in. “Are you sure about this Kaiba-kun?”

“Completely.”

“But…why?”

Kaiba stared in response. “Just take the cards and stop asking questions.”

“This isn’t some kind of suicide cry for help thing, is it Kaiba ?” Jounouchi asked. “You’re not planning on offing yourself , are you?”

Seto rolled his eyes. “No. And if I was I certainly wouldn’t tell you .”

Jounouchi let out an exasperated sigh. “Well now I can’t believe you! Is it for drugs? Do you need drug money?”

“No.”

“Bail?”

“No.”

“Hookers?”

Seto chose not to dignify that suggestion with a response.

“Well, thanks for the cards, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, carefully shutting the briefcase and removing it from the countertop. “We’ll treasure them.”

“Thank you.” Seto sighed and turned to leave.

“Wait, Kaiba-kun!” Yuugi exclaimed. “Jou and I are cooking dinner, do you want to join us?”

“What?”

“It’s going to be great—soup, salad, sushi!” Yuugi continued. “Jou-kun and grandpa would love to have you join us!”

Seto eyed them skeptically, taking in the sharp contrast between Yuugi’s glowing grin and the slightly more perturbed expressions that were storming across the face of Jounouchi and Yuugi’s grandfather.

“We’ve hardly seen you at all since we got back. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

And before Seto could concoct any witty replies about how hardly was altogether too often for his taste, he found himself being half-dragged, half-pushed into Yuugi’s dimly-lit and oppressively warm kitchen, all the while dodging Soloman’s broiling glare .

“Old man certainly does know how to hold a grudge,” he mused to himself as he stepped through the doorway.

“Well, you did send him to the hospital,” Jounouchi chimed as he trailed behind them.

“So? A man his age probably spends half his time in the hospital as it is. I’m sure he didn’t notice a significant change.”

“Grandpa is quite healthy, actually,” Yuugi replied over his shoulder as he resumed chopping tomatoes. “He says that the gaming business keeps him young at heart.”

Seto snorted as he sat down on an aged barstool. “I’m sure he does.”

“Kaiba-kun, could you help Jou-kun with the sushi, please?” Yuugi pointed to the other end of the laminate counter to where Jounouchi was juggling stacks of raw fish and sheets of seaweed.

Kaiba eyed him quizzically. “What are you doing cooking here—renting yourself out as an indentured servant to the Moto family?”

Jounouchi was about to reply when Yuugi cut in. “Actually, Jounouchi-kun has been staying with me since we returned.”

“Hm. Finally get adopted then, did you? Lucky, I bet the pound was just about to put you down .”

“Sour words spoil the cooking.” Soloman replied, joining them from the shop. “And every able body helps.” He eyed Kaiba with confusion veiled by lingering resentment.

Seto pinched his lips and rose, washed his hands, and joined Jounouchi at the counter, his muttering of ‘he’s doing it entirely wrong, anyway’ just barely audible.

“So, Kaiba, are you going to tell me the reason you’re abandoning all your cards? Or are you going to make me keep guessing? You never said no about the hookers, by the way.”

Seto scrutinized Jounouchi’s pile of completed sushi, picked a piece from the top, and began to re-wrap it.

“I can’t fathom how it’s any of your business.” Seto replied airily.

“Of course it’s my business! You’re the second-highest ranked duelist in the world! If you retire that leaves more room at the top.”

“Maybe I could no longer bear the thought of competing in a field in which you are regarded as a semi-literate player,” Kaiba drawled. “If you’re one of the world’s top-ranked duelists the game must surely be losing its legitimacy.”

“Wow, Kaiba, I had no idea that my success had had that profound an impact on you .” Jounouchi replied in mock surprise. “I’m real moved.”

Seto snorted. “Don’t get carried away.”

With four sets of hands now at work, the dinner preparations progressed rapidly, and the densely packed kitchen filled with a rich fragrant steam that clung to their clothes and fogged the windows.

“Are you on the run from the cops? Have to ditch your old identity and make a quick getaway ? Because I told Yuugi that it was only a matter of time until the law caught up with you .” He paused and studied Kaiba closely, biting his lip. “But seriously, those cards are your life. You have to get that we’re surprised.”

“Maybe I’ve learned that there’s more to life than childish card games.” Seto held his gaze steadily, and under the weight of each other’s scrutiny they both felt a heat rising in their faces that almost certainly wasn’t due to the cooking .

“Well look at Mr. Fancy Hands Kaiba here, all grown up! You’re the real picture of maturity, you know, what with all the petty insults. Thinking of outgrowing those any time soon?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Seto smirked.

“You could at least try to be civil, you know?” Jounouchi continued. “After all we’ve been through together, saving the world and all, you’d think that would have earned me some compassion in that stony heart of yours.”

“If I recall correctly, you are the one who threatened to punch my face in.” He sighed. “But, fine, whatever, you would find out soon enough anyway: I’m moving to the United States.”

The rustic melody of chopping tomatoes, bubbling soup, and sizzling onions suddenly ceased.

“What?! You can’t move!” Jounouchi exclaimed.

“Why not?” “You…you just can’t!”

“Compelling argument, as always. Your eloquence never ceases to amaze me.”

“When are you leaving, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi asked.

“End of the summer.” Seto replied flatly. He returned to wrapping the sushi, but paused when he felt himself under the weight of two heavy pairs of eyes. “What?”

“Six weeks?!” Jounouchi demanded, poorly concealing the mounting stress in voice. “And then, we’re just never going to see you again?”

“Is that a problem?”

Yuugi and Jounouhci settled into a contemplative silence. “Well, we’ve just lost so many people recently,” Yuugi began, involuntarily reaching for the recently-vacated space around his chest. "It’s just hard to think about saying any more goodbyes so soon.”

“I’m prepared to make it pretty easy for you.”

“But don’t you have to finish school?”

“That’s not really at the top of my priorities list. Kaiba Corp has the capacity to reach a series of grossly untapped markets overseas, and I’m not going to dawdle around in high school waiting for that opportunity to pass.”

Yuugi nodded. “We understand, Kaiba-kun. Just promise that you’ll stay in touch! And we have to hang out before you leave!”

Seto sighed as he rubbed his temples. “Must we?”

“He does kind of have a point.” Jounouchi added. “We’ve hardly had a chance to see each other when someone’s life wasn’t on the line.”

“I had no idea that was such a tragedy,” Seto replied, feeling himself bristle under the sudden onslaught of sentiment and attention .

“Well, tragedy might be overdoing it…” Jounouchi replied.

“I’d better go.” Seto cut in abruptly. “Before you two decide to chain me here .”

“Aren’t you at least going to stay for dinner?”

Seto grimaced. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.” He handed his last sushi to Jounouchi and whisked himself towards the entrance of the shop.

“Hey, Kaiba!” Jounouchi called after him, “you getting rid of any more stuff? Mind if I check it out?”

Seto’s “whatever” was almost swallowed in the chime of the doorbell and sizzle of the kitchen.

“He-hey, this is going to be a goldmine !” Jounouchi exclaimed triumphantly. He turned his attention to the sushi that had been shoved into his hand, as tightly and delicately spun as a spool of silken thread. “I bet that jerk is sitting on a pile of awesome stuff that none of us could even imagine. ”


	2. They'd Stumble and They'd Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter comes from the song Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous by Good Charlotte

Had events unfolded differently, Jounouchi seriously doubted that he ever would have become a world traveler. He had grown up in a world of clipping coupons, muffled ears, and tip toeing around broken glass and bruised feelings where the world often looked like a narrow window and felt like a resolutely locked door .

Until he had taken up with Yuugi, his orbit had been decidedly small and constrained to but a few of Domino’s distinctive neighborhoods. The financial district, continually grasping for the heavens with the ferocity of piercing iron claws, dominated the skyline with all the bulk and majesty of Jupiter. It contained, Jounouchi suspected, a similar vacuousness. Nonetheless, it was the one corner of the city that was almost guaranteed to be visible at night , raging quietly against the darkness like the last embers on the end of a stamped cigarette butt . For that he gave it credit.

The arty and upscale enclaves, hidden like small oases of roasting coffee, hip music, and fresh-cut flowers among a barren and lonesome desert of chain convenience stores and dreary apartment blocks reminded him of the tiny planets bobbing around the sun, all struggling for recognition and permanence while defiantly staring into the face of the force that both gave them life and was all too eager to destroy them.

The ragged and waterlogged streets of Domino’s port-side neighborhoods were his asteroid belt, always on the verge of disappearing into the ocean with little more than a whisper. The sleepy white-washed facades of the salty fish markets and ramshackle residential buildings just barely concealed the low rumble of chaos that flourished behind tattered curtains and rusted security doors.

The factories and storehouses, having largely fallen out of use after the end of the war , were now as cold, rocky, and remote as the planets that lurked in Saturn’s shadow. There had been plans for Kaiba Corp to revitalize this area—plans, Jounouchi suddenly recalled—whose cancellation had coincided closely with Gozaburo’s death and the transfer of power into Seto’s hands . They had now acquired a second skin of mold and weeds and bore the scars of vandalism as they were left to cling to the coastline.

And somewhere in that cacophony of light and noise, nestled in the dense salty fog, was his home—the earth in its entirety. He had been born into a caste whose life trajectory had been set from the start: a few circles around the bottom of the sink before disappearing down the drain pipe. If there was a building that better encapsulated that sense of bitter resignation he had yet to see it. And yet, for the vast majority of his life this building had been his entire world.

Until Yuugi. Jounouchi smiled inwardly at how many things in his life in his life had been until Yuugi. That boy had certainly done a number of him. Without Yuugi there would have been no crisp beaches of California , no thin air of the upper atmosphere , no encompassing Egyptian heat . There would have been no opportunity to hold his life in his hands, knowing that if it should fade and blink out of focus, it wouldn’t have been for nothing . And without the influence of Yuugi on his life, Jounouchi certainly wouldn’t be on his current quest directly into the heart of the sun.

He snorted at the comparison. Though, the more he considered it, the more apt it seemed. The people of the city certainly treated Kaiba Corp that way, both basking in the warm glow that the success of the radically revolutionized company emitted and cursing the shadows that it cast.

It was almost enough to make Jounouchi feel bad for the plight of the young entrepreneur at its helm—until he caught sight of his house . Dazzling ribbons of blossoms swam in a rich emerald sea that arched in an elegant wave to the main house, which had adopted a pearlescent shimmer in the early morning light. Jounouchi gagged as he made his way towards the entrance. He had rolled his eyes at the theatrics of Battle City, but the thought of living entrenched in such opulence was enough to make a heavy fist form at the base of his stomach .

“Halt, intruder!” A nasal voice called out.

Jounouchi spun frantically, trying to pinpoint the location of the voice before noticing an elaborate series of speakers and security cameras situated at regular intervals around the industrial-grade security gate.

“I’m not an intruder!” Jounouchi growled. “I was invited here.”

The speaker scoffed. “Invited by whom?”

“By Kaiba. Would else would be doing the inviting around here?”

The speaker paused, and Jounouchi could have sworn that the felt the camera narrow in on his worn jeans and wind-swept hair . He set his jaw and stared into the center of the lens, making sure to flex his biceps a few times for good measure.

“Name?”

“Jounouchi Katsuya.”

Another measured pause from the speakers.

“And what is your business with Mr. Kaiba, Mr. Jounouchi?” Dripping with disdain this time.

Jounouchi paused, biting his lip and running his fingers through his hair. Announcing that he was here to rifle through Kaiba’s discards likely wasn’t going to win him many favors with the security guards. Then again, the truth probably wouldn’t either .

“Um…I’m here for a social call!” He announced, grinning boldly at the camera. “Yeah, Kaiba and I are great buddies, we go way back.”  
This proclamation earned him a stunned silence from the speaker .

“I will page Mr. Kaiba.” It finally replied, not completely able to mask the incredulous tone in its voice. A few tense moments passed and the gate slowly slid open.  
Jounouchi made sure to shoot the camera another glare as he passed through. He shuddered as the gate snapped shut behind him, making him feel uncomfortably similar to a mouse that had just stepped into a trap.

“What are you doing here?” Kaiba asked as he opened the door, Jounouchi’s hand still hovering above the knocker.

“You said I could come over, remember? Your big moving sale?”

Kaiba narrowed his eyes and seemed to chew his tongue. “I wasn’t expecting you to respond so…enthusiastically.”

“Well you have a long history of underestimating me, don’t you?”

“Apparently.” He replied stiffly, retreating from the doorway.

“Ah, you don’t have to worry about me, Kaiba. I’ll be so care —“ his unfinished thought was consumed by the vacant enormity of the interior of the Kaiba mansion . His bike was left half-forgotten sprawled across the entryway as he slipped inside, suddenly aware of the way his footsteps seemed to resonate along the marble floor. “Wow, this place is huge!” he exclaimed. “But why don’t you have any furniture or anything?”

He began prowling around the perimeter of the foyer, peering down the empty halls and gawking upwards at the smoothly arched ceilings. His voice bounced around the bare walls, eventually finding Kaiba, who was standing rigidly in the dining room encased in a cage of packing boxes .

“I mean, this is such a waste of space ! You could fit so much in here.”

“Like what, exactly?”

“I don’t know…” Jounouchi gently caressed the polished surface of the deep mahogany dining table, trying to determine whether he could see his reflection. “If I owned a place like this, I would turn this room into an arcade…or a…homeless shelter .”

“A homeless shelter? Really.” He scrutinized Jounouchi quizzically over crossed arms. “That would hardly be fitting.”

“It would at least be useful.” Jounouchi replied. “I mean, what do you do with all this emptiness?”

Seto sighed. “Largely nothing . I haven’t lived here in years.”

“What?!” Jounouchi gawked. “That makes it even more of a waste. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave this place .” He added wistfully.

“Polite society requires that I retain and maintain the Kaiba mansion for largely symbolic purposes. So using it as a homeless shelter—or any other chartable entity for that matter—would be entirely inappropriate. However, concerns for the safety of Mokuba and I dictate that we locate our permanent residence elsewhere.” He sighed. “I agree though, it is a waste .”

“Huh, so this place is really unsafe, then?”

“It’s too conspicuous. Gozaburo had many enemies.” He paused, then added, “As I do, I suppose .”

“Hm.” Jounouchi began to pace the maze of packing boxes. “You know, making enemies I can understand. But I never pegged you as someone who cared all too much about polite society.”

Jounouchi thought he caught a smile flicker across Kaiba’s lips. “As a rule, I don’t. However, occasionally even our most steadfast principles must be relaxed.”

“What for?”

“Credibilty.”

“Oh. Yeah I guess that might be important to you.” He continued pacing through the towers of boxes, taking care to avoid those that were more precariously stacked. As he turned a corner he caught sight of the structure from a new angle, and the seemingly random arrangement of boxes suddenly melted away. What was once chaos suddenly struck him as a complex and multidimensional pattern, crafted with as much care and precision as the pins in a lock—merely waiting for the key to turn them.

“Hey…you were building forts in here!” Jounouchi announced.

“That was Mokuba’s idea.”

“Yeah right.” Jounouchi snorted. “We have to do this!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not? What could possibly go wrong?”

“You could break everything.”

“I would not!”

Seto snorted. “Just listen to yourself—you sound like a petulant child. I’m doing you a favor already, so the least you can do is try to behave rationally.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes and staggered back towards Seto at the head of the table. “Fine, fine, you’re the boss here. I guess the idea of seeing the great Seto Kaiba step down from his throne and have a little fun was just too much for me to resist.”

Seto pointedly ignored this comment, instead gesturing to the boxes that were stacked—in the formation of a barricade, Jounouchi now saw—directly in front of them.  
“Anything of interest to you will be in these. Try not to damage anything.”

“Thanks!” Jounouchi chimed, taking a seat by the nearest of the boxes, enthusiasm and anticipation simmering in his eyes.

However, once the box was in his hands, he paused.

“So, I get the house thing, I guess—don’t want to associate yourself too closely with your dad, I can see that. I don’t understand all of this, though. Why hold on to all of this for so long, and just get rid of it now? I mean, I can’t imagine you were using these—“ he titled his head slightly to read the box’s label—“ancient statues all that much before, so why wait so long?”

Seto seemed to momentarily enter a state at the crossroads of wakefulness and dreaming. Eyes slightly clouded, brows crushed in concentration, tongue chewing on unvoiced thoughts—it struck Jounouchi as not at all unlike the trance Yuugi entered when consulting with the spirit of the puzzle.

“Just open the box.”

Jounouchi, suddenly acutely aware of the uncomfortable thickness of his fingers, carefully unfolded the cardboard flaps and delicately unpeeled several layers of bubble wrap, gradually revealing a three-foot statue of a man with the head of a falcon, decked in a crown of plumes, and swathed in scimitars and arrows. The surface was as smooth as air and painted with the dazzling luminance of the sun, the refreshing cerulean clarity of the early morning sky, and the magnetic warmth of dancing flames. Clutching the statue in his hands, he was overcome with the scent of freshly picked herbs, dusty skin, and worn linens. He could almost feel the sand caked between his toes and the sweat dripping down his back.

“Is this an Egyptian thing?” He whispered.

“Montu: originally the manifestation of the destructive nature of the sun, he later came to be attributed with the ferocious and devastating nature of war itself.” Seto echoed Jounouchi’s solemn tone. “It’s in remarkable condition, considering its age.”

“It’s so light,” Jounouchi murmured, lifting the statue closer to his face.

“It’s hollow .”

“You think Yuugi would be interested in this?”

Seto shrugged. “I figured he’s had enough encounters with ancient Egyptian memorabilia to last a lifetime, but you’re welcome to give it to him if you want.

“Gozaburo had…a fetish for collecting these types of artifacts. It wasn’t out of scholarly interest, either. His interest in other cultures extended exactly as far as it was directly useful to him. The only knowledge that was interesting to him was what he could use to manipulate and blackmail.” He began to pace the room. “He brought back these mementoes from each land that he claimed to have conquered—some symbol of that nation’s history and strength—and used it as a decoration for his boardroom. That was how he knew he had won—being able to physically remove something from where it belonged and bring it under his dominion. ” Seto sighed—a long, dark, heavy sigh that seemed to penetrate every cell in his body.

“From the first day I lived here I remember hating them. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, every time I saw one of these acquisitions, I was flooded with…anger. And fear . Like I was being suffocated, or trampled. Especially this one.” He stared over his shoulder at Montu. “It felt like Gozaburo had poured something of himself into that statue, and every time I saw it I wanted to…see it destroyed. But after Gozaburo’s death I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I tried to, but it seemed that the harder I pushed into it, the harder it pushed back into me .” His eyes darkened. “But that’s not the case anymore. I can look at it now, touch it even, I could blow it up and feel…nothing .”

He hadn’t noticed how closely he had drifted towards Jounouchi as he spoke, but once he became aware of his position he quickly withdrew. “So there’s really no point in keeping it around ,” he concluded. “Do you want it?”

Jounouchi shook his head, not taking his eyes from Montu’s. “Nah, this type of thing belongs in a museum. He gently placed the statue back in its wrappings. “This thing is probably worth, what, like a million bucks ?” He laughed nervously. “Why would you even consider just giving this away?”

“I’m worth tens of billions of dollars.”

“So? What does that have to do with it?” Jounouchi replied, somewhat more harshly than he had intended.

“It means that monetary gain is not a motivating factor. Compared to me, all of these items are essentially worthless.”

“Huh.” Jounouchi made his way to another of the closer boxes. “Say, is that why you’re getting rid of your cards? They don’t make you…feel anything anymore ?”

Seto was suddenly transplanted back to cold nights stretched on the bedroom floor, swimming in stars and drinking in galaxies, bathing in the warm smile of time and feeling that no obstruction would ever be enough to mar his path. All of creation had swarmed inside him on those nights.

He was still struggling to form an adequate response when Mokuba swept into the room, pushing a cart filled to the brim with dusty textbooks.

“I am not going up there again!” He announced as he entered. “That room has got to be the creepiest place in the world. Oh, hey Jounouchi,” he added. “What are you doing here?”

“Your brother said I could come over and pinch some of your stuff before you guys take off.”

“Oh really…” Mokuba pulled an expression that Jounouchi placed somewhere between surprise and disgust, though the disgust, he would later learn, was not directed at him.  
“I told you, it’s just the pipes, Mokuba,” Seto muttered, the exasperation in his tone giving Jounouchi the impression that they had had this conversation several times before.  
“Pipes or not, it’s still creepy. If you want the rest of the books, you’ll have to get them yourself.”

“What’s so creepy about the pipes?”

“The library has thin walls,” Seto explained, “and is also located directly below the hot water heater, which emits low frequency sound waves, believed to be responsible for inducing supernatural experiences.”

“You mean the library is haunted?”

“I mean it’s the pipes,” Seto grumbled as he began emptying the cart. “You watch Jounouchi,” he instructed Mokuba. “Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.” He turned and began to wheel the empty cart back towards the library.

Mokuba sat next to Jounouchi on the floor. “Why would you want any of our step-father’s old things? Everything here is so creepy.”

Jounouchi shrugged. “I think it’s kind of cool.” He paused. “Why are you guys moving, really? Kaiba said something about expanding your overseas market, but would you really have to pack everything up and take off for that?”

“Nii-sama is pretty hands-on when it comes to business,” he laughed. “As you can probably tell. He didn’t even trust any moving companies to help with the packing. I’m sure he thinks the team in America will let everything fall apart if he isn’t there to supervise them.” He bit his lip and his eyes turned slightly ashen. “Honestly, though, you probably know about as much about it as I do. Seto hasn’t told me much about his decisions since…well, since Gozaburo .”

“And that’s okay with you?”

Mokuba shrugged, not taking his eyes from the floor. “I don’t mind moving—Seto and I have never stayed in one place for too long .”

Jounouchi’s response was stifled by a gasp as he laid eyes on the contents of the box he had opened, which was haphazardly packed with almost every type of antique weapon he could imagine: a rustic and earthy set of arrows, a delicate and springy fencing foil, a gaudy ivory and gold clad pistol, a rusty revolver, and one of the most astounding things Jounouchi had ever seen.

“Wow,” he murmured as he extracted it from the box, careful to avoid scraped knuckles and sliced fingers. “This is amazing.”

Holding it up to the light revealed even more excruciating detail—encased in a web of closely entwined gleaming silver and blue dragons was a samurai sword beyond any that Jounouchi had even witnessed, let along held. The blade shimmered like cold moonlight and was so sharp and electric that it seemed to hum in his hands. The handle was swathed in thick, supple black letter that was elegantly embossed, though in a language that he couldn’t read . Jounouchi took a few practice swings, laughing as his entire arm seemed to burn and glow under its weight and energy.

“You think Kaiba would let me keep this?” he asked, demonstrating his most dramatic and jaunty poses.

“I don’t know,” Mokuba looked up at him in puzzlement, then down at the shadowy box of weaponry. “I’ve never seen these before.”

“Well, let’s go ask, then!” Jounouchi exclaimed. “Where is he?”

Mokuba led Jounouchi out of the dining room and deeper into the heart of the mansion. As they inched closer to its core, the warmth and blitheness of the exterior rooms was consumed by a cold, hungry darkness that gnawed at their skin and hissed into their ears. The marble and mahogany surfaces that may have once sparkled in the sunlight were now colonized by cobwebs and thick layers of dust. The unoiled floors groaned under the weight of their feet, as if sensing the presence of an unwelcome intruder.  
“This place gives me the creeps.” Jounouchi muttered, unconsciously clenching the sword tighter in his fist.

“This place has always given me the creeps,” Mokuba commiserated.

Ascending one last staircase, as twisted and tight as a jagged set of teeth, they found themselves in a gloomy hallway lined with resentful faces.

“What…what is this?” Jounouchi stammered as he tried to dodge the angry glares. “Just when I thought this place couldn’t get any worse…”

“Each generation of the Kaiba family gets its portrait done,” Mokuba explained. “These are the oldest ones over here,” he gestured to the series of paintings nearest to where Jounouchi stood.

Jounouchi peered into each set of flat, stony eyes in turn, wondering whether it was the gloom, the painter, or the subjects themselves who were responsible for the skull-like quality of the faces. The further down the hall he slunk, the more he became convinced that this was, after all, a family trait. Each face bore a nearly identical stiff and icy expression. Each pair of eyes seemed to be glazed and far removed, as if their owner had long ago lost sight of all that could not be bought, sold, or destroyed . As if they were simply waiting for death to overtake them and drag them back down to hell, and weren’t at all opposed to the idea of forcing Jounouchi down with them.  
“Looks like a pleasant bunch,” he muttered.

Mokuba laughed, a caustic fiery sound in the unrelenting cold of the hall. “Tell me about it. Seto used to say that if we ever needed to interrogate someone we could just lock them up in here and they would break in seconds.”

“Sounds about—“ Jounouchi halted suddenly. Staring down at him was Kaiba, a younger, smaller Kaiba, but the effect was still disarming.

He stood posed rigidly, with Gozaburo’s thick fingers curled tightly around his shoulder. Jounouchi could almost feel the strain that Gozaburo’s grasp imposed on the fabric of Seto’s blazer, the ache that would linger in his bones for days afterward—or would have, if he hadn’t already grown accustomed to his step-father’s suffocating grip.  
This painting, Jounouchi noted, was markedly different from the others. It contained only two figures, as opposed to the four or five featured in the prior generations of the Kaiba family. The painting itself also seemed to demonstrate a stylistic departure from its predecessors. Whereas the other painters had maintained a photorealistic quality to their work, the painter of Seto and Gozaburo’s portrait seemed to have a relationship with reality that was tenuous at best. Using clever distortions and mischievous exaggerations, the painter had grasped at something more visceral and immediate than reality itself. Seto’s withering stare showcased this effect most dramatically. What at first glance appeared to be a recreation of the expression Gozaburo wore revealed something far darker and more intricate on closer inspection. In Kaiba’s eyes, Jounouchi saw a bubbling mélange of anger, hurt, and fear. Those were the eyes of a boy who had spent countless nights both battling off and finding solace in his insomnia, thrashing about in bed like a convict in chains, listening to his nightmares and becoming increasingly convinced that one day they would all come true. Those were eyes that were all too familiar to Jounouchi. Those were eyes that he had worn himself far too often than he cared to admit.

In Kaiba’s posture he saw a redwood about to be leveled, a canon moments from being melted down. He was the mind of a man with the heart and body of a little boy who had committed every fiber of his being to resisting the torture imposed on him by his oppressors but that knew, in some dark and quiet place buried deep with himself, that the battle was already lost—the most sacred corners of his heart had already conceded to what he could not escape.

“This is incredible,” Jounouchi said, resisting the urge to reach into the painting and rescue the little boy trapped inside.

“It’s one of Pegasus’—before he got famous doing Duel Monsters.”

“Why aren’t you in it, Mokuba?” Jounouchi asked.

“What are you doing here?” Kaiba growled as he emerged from the library, pushing the newly replenished cart.

“Oh, I was, uh, wondering if I could keep this?” Jounouchi asked, sheepishly holding out the sword for Kaiba’s inspection.

Kaiba glared at him, then began to scrutinize the object in question. The moment he recognized it, his eyes grew wide and a tremor passed over his face.

“Where did you find this?” he demanded, voice pale.

“Uh, downstairs in your…box of weapons. Are you feeling okay? You don’t look so good…”

“Absolutely not!” Kaiba barked, snatching the sword roughly out of Jounouchi’s hands. “Get out. Now.”


	3. Is It Fast Enough So We Could Fly Away

The smell was the first thing to bring the memories back—scalding, sharp, and bitter. The sticky stench of sweaty latex gloves, the faint musk of dead skin, puss, and blood that was impossible to fully wash out of the sheets. The caustic wafts of antibacterial soaps and cleansers that slimed up every surface. No matter how much they sprayed and sanitized, the air still felt dirty, the beds still stank like coffins.

Jounouchi was thankful that at least none of those beds were for him this time. 

It had felt strange to him to enter the hospital without being first rushed through emergency. He liked to pretend that the world of extended hospital stays, sometimes interrupted by only a few restless nights curled up at the foot of a bed, was firmly locked behind a rigid, impenetrable door. But sitting at his father’s bedside, scrutinizing the rise and fall of his boxy chest, that world felt unbearably close.

He cracked his knuckles and gazed around the room for the sixth or seventh time since his arrival, trying to fix his eyes on anything but the unconscious and helpless figure stretched out before him. 

“So, you found yourself incapacitated again, did you? Figures, you and your reckless lifestyle and idiot brain. You couldn’t take care of yourself for a minute.” He mimicked the words that his father had hurled at him so often when their verbal confrontations had turned hot and harsh, in the older days when their roles had been reversed. Or, almost reversed —Jounouchi sporting a limp and a colorful collage of cuts and bruises, his father wielding a disapproving scowl and an arm that was stronger than Jounouchi would ever care to admit. He spoke, however, without malice .

When the news that his father had been hospitalized had reached him upon his return to Domino, Jounouchi had wondered whether he ought to feel happy. He had become, by almost any meaningful measure, an amazing success, outshining both society’s expectations of him and his expectations of himself. And in the process of silencing his critics and expunging their doubts, he had silenced the harsh words and suspended the heavy hands of the man who had always tormented him the most.

But upon his first visit to the hospital, laying eyes on his father’s immobile face, his heart had not sung with triumph. The moment had hung empty, stupid and silent out before him, and in place of the solid iron moral superiority that Jounouchi sensed he ought to be feeling he found only a gossamer veil of discomfort and unease. If this was a victory, it was cheap and hollow. And if Jounouchi regularly admonished his father with the same disparagements that he had so often been dealt, it was merely for the sake of having a familiar script to follow. 

He sighed, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling.

“Do you want me tell you I’m sorry? That I shouldn’t have left? I didn’t have a choice. I’m sure you would understand if you listened—if you tried to believe me. But you wouldn’t have believed me, would you? If I had told you where I was going. And honestly, I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone. I’ve been longer without coming home.” He laughed, softly and bitterly. “And now who’s the one that can’t make it on their own?”

He was interrupted by a soft knock on the door, followed by Shizuka’s cautious footsteps to take a seat beside him. 

“How is he doing, Katsuya?” she asked, trying to smother the urgency and concern that caught in the back of her throat.

“Same as last time, more or less.”

She nodded, then turned her attention to Jounouchi. “How are you?” She squeezed his shoulder gently.

He smiled, trying to speak with enough sunshine to wipe the storm clouds from her eyes. “I’m good. Yuugi has a nice place. You don’t have to worry.”

“Of course.” She smiled weakly, but her eyes fluttered over to the bed, and a tremor seemed to steal through her spine down to her fingertips.

“Hey,” Jounouchi gently turned her face away and stared earnestly into her eyes. “You don’t need to worry about me.” He laughed “I think at this point I could handle almost anything that life decides to throw at me.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I know you’ll be alright, but…I want you to be better than alright .”

He chuckled. “As far as I’m concerned I already am. But thanks for the concern.” He ruffled her hair, encouraging her to burrow her face against his chest.  
“How are you holding up? And mom?”

“We’re fine. Well, she’s fine. She acts like it doesn’t bother her at all. I only wish she would come to see him…”

Jounouchi sighed, stroking the hair that draped over her sloping shoulders. “I know you do, but if she doesn’t want to then that’s her decision.”

“But how can she not want to see him?! They loved each other once, didn’t they? They loved each other enough to want to have us. How…how can that all go away so quickly? How can she hate him so much that she lets it keep her away, at a time like this ?” She whispered, voice simmering with desolate indignation. 

“Maybe it’s not hate that’s keeping her away?”

“What is it then?”

Jounouchi thought for a moment, watching his fingers weave through the silky waves of Shizuka’s hair. This time of year it glowed like amber and wine, the way it seemed to capture heat and set the whole sky on fire. There was still Egyptian sand caked under his nails.

“Maybe,” he suggested. “Maybe she’s angry at herself. And it makes her sad . Maybe she’s afraid of having to think too much about it.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jounouchi listening to the mechanical melody of their father’s life support system, Shizuka listening to the fortitudinous rhythm of his heart .

“Do you think they regret having us?” Shizuka asked.

“Psh, who could regret having you ?” Jounouchi scoffed. “That’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”

He could feel Shizuka smile into his chest, though her happiness soon dissipated. “Sometimes I just wonder if they might have been happier—their lives might have been easier…”  
“Easier doesn’t equal better .” 

“It’s just that, you used to say that mom and dad would have had a better life if you had never been born. ”

Jounouchi felt a wave of ice rush directly to his stomach as his arms and legs turned cold and rigid. He urgently grasped Shizuka’s shoulders and turned her to face him. “Hey, we were kids when I said that, alright?! Don’t let those kinds of things change how you feel about yourself. Do you understand?”

Shizuka nodded, but didn’t untie the knots in her brow. “So you don’t feel that way anymore?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “When does having kids ever make anyone’s life easier? The fact is, they didn’t get married for the best reasons and I don’t think there’s much we ever could have done to keep them together. It just wasn’t in their nature. The only thing we can really do is be there for them when they need us, and be there for each other.”

“I just wish I could do more,” she sighed. “He looks so helpless, tied up to all these machines. I don’t like it…it reminds me of when—“ her voice broke suddenly, and a wave of tears rushed down her cheeks like a river surging over a dam. “I don’t want anything like that to happen again! I couldn’t…I can’t…” 

She pulled away abruptly, as if the intimacy of the contact between them was crowding her mind with dark and repulsive thoughts, memories of a time when that connection between them had rattled along the edge of rupture.

“I couldn’t bear it,” she spoke into the floor.

“I know, I know. That was scary for both of us. But it was a one-time thing! All that is over now…”

He grasped at words with the naïve and helpless confidence of plunging headlong into the dark. His sister, usually so eager to be comforted, had turned her back to him and was limply hugging her own slumped shoulders.

“Was it?” She whispered, a stony shadow creeping into the corners of her voice. 

“Shizuka—“

“And how can you know it will never happen again?!” she cried, still refusing to look at him. “How can you know that you’ll never be in danger again?” 

“No one can know that for sure, Shizuka. The chance of getting hurt is part of life; it’s just something that you have to accept.”

She sniffed and wiped her cheeks with the end of her sleeve, then turned to glance sidelong at their father, eyes beseeching. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” she spoke half to herself.

“I know, neither do I. And I don’t plan on it anytime soon , okay? I promise you can look forward to many more years of me being around to beat the boys off of you.”

She smiled, a smile as dim and pale as sunlight filtered to the ocean floor. And she was still trembling, as if consciously holding every cell of her body together. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Me either.” He gently grasped her shoulder again, surprised, as always, by the delicacy of her bones. “So we’ll both take good care of each other. Let’s get out of here, okay? Dad’s certainly not going anywhere.”

Jounouchi didn’t realize how cold and stale the air of the hospital room had been until they entered the courtyard, though it was hardly the reprieve he had expected. Peppered as it was with old ladies clinging to walkers and grey-skinned nurses sucking on cigarettes—and lined on all sides with heavy beige walls—Jounouchi could not completely shake off the oppressive gloom of age and illness .

“You never did tell me everything you did in Egypt.” Shizuka noted as they set off down the cobblestone path that lined the perimeter.

“You’re right.” He chuckled. “If I told all that then we would be here all night.”

“Well, try.”

He sighed and spoke, half to himself, “I don’t even know where to start.”

When Jounouchi looked back on his life it felt like it had progressed in large, discontinuous, and completely unpredictable jumps. Nothing had happened and then everything had happened, all at once. And when he tried to disentangle the end from the beginning, everything seemed to blur and run together, abandoning any sense of linearity in space and time.

In some ways, then, it seemed easier and more natural to start at the end of the story rather than the beginning.

“You remember Kaiba? I saw him the other day.”

Shizuka’s eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with anything ?”

Jounouchi stepped off the path and began to meander into the center of the courtyard, only half paying attention to where his feet were taking him. “Well, he was there, you know? In Egypt. He kind of saved us . Well, it was Atem—that was his name, Atem—that really saved us physically. But Kaiba did too, or, the guy he used to be did. And they were kind of the same, in that moment …”

“Katsuya, what are you talking about?”

He turned to see that Shizuka had not followed him. She was standing still, rigid, several paces behind. Eyes wide, voice shadowy. ‘How much danger were you in?”

His first thought was to shrug it off the same way he let cuts, bruises, and fractured bones roll off his back when Shizuka scrutinized his health. When faced with danger his first instinct was to diminish it, reduce its potency, laugh at it—if not for his sake then for hers. If Shizuka didn’t know that he was in danger, or in pain, then he couldn’t be. So long as she was ignorant then he was immortal . That was just how things worked, how they had always been.

“A lot.” He replied. “We, we did stuff that I never could have imagined. And it was terrifying.” He gulped, swallowing the memories of festering shadows and fiery blasts, the sound of death ringing in his ears. “We almost died. All of us. And if we had died then none of this would be here. Nothing.”

Shizuka nodded. Her expression remained steady but her hands were trembling, rapidly flexing and grasping at the air as if searching for something to hold onto.  
“We re-wrote history, literally.” He laughed at the ridiculous sound of the statement. “But we made it better. We made it the way it was supposed to be.”

“Better in what way?”

“Well…” Trying to piece together his transient sensory impressions into a coherent narrative was like mining the clouds for diamonds. He sank into one of the low wooden benches, resting his chin on his fist. “Atem explained it pretty well, I think. He said that he was taught to rule without compassion—that everyone in his time had been raised like that. And so when they were in danger, like when they were threatened by Bakura’s army, they acted in anger and hate. But that only made it worse, because it set a precedent of defeating evil with more evil, and that continues up until time today—at least it did—it would have—if it hadn’t been for us. He said that meeting us taught him a new way of seeing things, a kinder way of treating people, and that encouraged him to rule differently when he went back to the world of his memories. So this time, he didn’t defeat Bakura with hate or anger—he got him to change his mind, by emphasizing with him. And that’s the new precedent now, I guess. That’s the legacy we have now.”

Shizuka sat next to him, slightly stunned by the earnestness of his countenance. “Do you think that’s true ?”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I feel…different, though. Ever since I got back, things don’t seem the same to me anymore. And people.” He shook his head. “It could be a coincidence, though.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Do you think it’s a coincidence ?”

“I hope not.” He paused. “But at the same time, it’s kind of scary to think that it’s true, isn’t it? That the entire world is an entirely different place now than it was when we left it. The rules are scrambled. Anything could happen.”

“Scary or exciting?”

He chuckled. “I guess it’s both. We get a chance to start over .”

Shizuka nodded. “I wish mom and dad would see it that way.”

“Aw, me too.” He leaned forward, lightly pressing his lips to the crown of her head. “Some people you just can’t get to stick together, I guess.”

They bathed in silence for a few moments, watching the hospital patients stumble along on crutches and listening to the whispers in the leaves.

“You never explained with Kaiba,” Shizuka reminded him. “How did he save you?”

“He became the new pharaoh, or his former self did. It was his job to make sure that Atem’s memory was respected. He had to ensure that the legacy wasn’t forgotten.”

Jounouchi cautiously let his mind drift back to some of his final moments in Egypt. The coronation of the new pharaoh—despite its triumphant grandeur—could not escape the shadows of shock and sadness that hung in the eyes and around the shoulders of everyone in attendance. The simultaneous disappearance of Atem and Bakura had been so sudden and so surreal that the people of Egypt largely felt that their newfound peace had not been earned but brusquely thrust upon them. They flocked to the temples, staggered through the streets with weak knees and fluttering hearts, staring hard at the world around them as if in an effort to determine whether they were truly awake .

The absence of a body made the news that much harder to comprehend. With nothing to entomb, nothing to cherish and sanctify, the people felt as if they had been robbed, and consequently a wave of indignation and despair had rippled through the populace. There had been whispers that it was improper to appoint a new pharaoh when their former ruler had not yet been laid to rest, but as the days after the war ripened and turned rotten, they seemed to come to a general understanding that their country could not continue to charge into the future without the firm grip and steady hand of a new ruler.

Jounouchi had been inundated by deep blue waves of grief throughout the duration of the ceremony—the scars of the battle were still too sharp and cut too deep for him to see things clearly. The one tangible memory he had—which stood out in such pointed relief that it was almost painful for him to recall—was Kaiba’s stricken face. Atem and Bakura might have been gone, but Kaiba looked like he had risen himself from the dead in order to attend—in order to witness the ascension of the former bearer of his soul. His eyes were hooded, his face pale, rigid, and sallow, and until their return to Domino he had spoken only in coarse and turbid whispers—when he could be cajoled into speaking at all.

Jounouchi had locked those memories away—they had been too dark and confusing to look at directly. But now, as he slowly began to chip away at the walls he had built around them in his mind, he found himself thinking of a different kind of box—a box that had sat under Kaiba’s bed collecting dust for years, packed to the brim with iron shadows and steel fangs—that he had just happened have unearthed a few days prior, along with, it seemed, a plethora of heavily suppressed and unpleasant emotions .

“That’s a lot of responsibility for one person.” Shizuka replied. “To have to make a change so big.”

“Yeah.” Jounouchi replied. “You’ve got to wonder how he held up .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title for this chapter comes from the song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman


	4. Amends for Yesterday

There were few things that broke Isis’s heart more than having to shatter the smooth, clear silence that had settled over them over the past few weeks. The sharp cacophony of rancor and violence that had punctuated their adolescence was finally beginning to melt into a sweet and soothing rhythm that shimmered in the warm lavender sky and rolled lazily along the banks of the river.

For the first time that she could remember, the passing of time was no longer the constricting rope that tightly bound her hands behind her back, but a long stream of luscious ribbon that unfurled at her feet and spread out into the endless, deliciously unknowable distance. For the first time that she could remember, Isis was no longer afraid to meet her brother’s gaze, lest she not recognize what she saw lurking there.

Malik and Ryou moved about the house, as silent and still as a pair of ghosts, speaking almost exclusively in soft, dewy whispers. Or they spent hours out on the sands, dodging the tourists and the heat, flickering in and out of focus on the horizon like two small shadows that were for the first time allowed to run free under the sun. In the evenings they reunited in the bustling warmth of the kitchen or on the patio, gazing up at the sky that had long ago been bleached of all its stars.

And Isis convinced herself that she would have forever been content with such a life, where the days chased each other in slow circles and her dreams sparkled—unclouded by nightmares. No longer having the necklace to consult, she had no way of knowing whether such a life would have ever been possible if it had not been shattered, while still in infancy, by the rattle of a telephone call and dry rasp of a voice that she had longed more than anything to forget.

-xxx-

“I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

Underneath the smirk in his voice, Isis thought that she did, in fact, catch a tone of genuine surprise. “Nor was I, Mr. Kaiba,” she replied. “But we are all of us at the mercy of life’s unexpected turns, aren’t we?”

“Not you.”

“Not anymore.” She gave him a wispy smile, but the gentle upward curve of her lips poorly disguised the darker emotions that floated over her features.

“Really.” He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her face closely. “I don’t believe you.”

Isis laughed softly. “And what, Mr. Kaiba, have I ever done to cause you to doubt my honesty ?”

He snorted. “That’s a joke, right?”

She merely smiled, serenely elusive as the petals shrouding a ripening blossom. “I would not have expected to find you here, either.”

For the second time in almost as many days, Seto was placed in the uncomfortable position of having to justify his presence in a place where, even he had to admit, he really had no business being. 

Returning to the Domino City Museum had not elicited the same tight-throated, nausea-inducing feeling of reentering the Kame Game Shop, but stepping through the door had still filled him with a profound sense of unease, as if he were being mercilessly scrutinized under the dispassionate eye of the world’s most exacting microscope . This was doubly true in the rooms that housed the Ancient Egyptian exhibit. Seto had carefully avoided making eye contact with his sunk relief doppelganger; Mokuba, however, had barely been able to tear his eyes from the monument, and had commented several times how remarkable it was that the primary figures looked exactly like Seto and Yuugi.

Here at the far end of the gallery, encased in stacks of moving boxes , Seto felt slightly safer. All the history was tightly packed away, neatly labeled, hidden from probing eyes and inquisitive minds. 

“I’m here to make a donation,” Seto replied, sounding slightly less definitive than he had intended.

“Oh really?” Isis‘s eyes widened in curiosity. “May I ask of what?”

Seto shrugged, stepping aside to reveal the stacks of boxes piled almost up to his shoulders behind him. “Some of my step-father’s old….treasures. I thought the public might find a better use for them than he did.” 

Isis stepped closer cautiously, gently extracting one of the boxes from the top of the pile and laying it on the exhibit case besides them.

“Was Gozaburo an avid historian?” She asked, delicately prying past several layers of packing tape and cardboard .

“An avid imperialist and appropriator.”

“Ah, I see. Unfortunately, the study of antiquity is often marred by people with such dubious motives. Uprooting artifacts from their native homes and hauling them across the globe makes it incredibly difficult to study them as their original creators intended.”

“And how exactly do you reconcile that philosophy with your work here?” He gestured to the glass cases that lined the hall. “This isn’t an exactly naturalistic environment for ancient Egyptian artifacts.”

She nodded. “A valid point. However, there are factors that you are failing to consider: the first being the instructive nature of museums, which allows the legacy of extinguished cultures to live on, long after their accomplishments might have otherwise been forgotten. Second, we must consider the possibility that—despite the fact that this is not the most naturalistic environment—bringing their works here, where they might be seen by you, was in fact exactly what their creators originally intended .” She peered pensively into the shadowed contents of the box for a moment before suddenly changing the subject. “Seto , how have you been?”

His jaw stiffened and his hands balled into tight fists. “Fine.” 

She pursed her lips and scrutinized his face, searching out the faintest crack or shadow in its stolid, stubborn surface. He glared back coolly.

“That’s not the impression you gave me when we last met .”

“You always have had a tendency to read too much into things,” he snapped back. “What are you even doing here, anyway?”

She was silent for a moment, struggling to keep her voice steady. “I wish you would think a bit more .”

“What is there to think about ?” A threat lurked in the corners of his voice—red and dark and ready to pounce. That kind of tone would often send his subordinates scampering towards the nearest exit, but it only made Isis’s eyes darken in icy anger.

“Do you not realize the significance of your position? Can you not conceive of the opportunities presented to you—and what you will be abandoning by refusing to take advantage of them?”

“Opportunities ?!” he scoffed. “How can you even—what kind of opportunities could I possibly have? I have—you lied to me !” The mounting agitation in his voice was now attracting curious glances from across the gallery, and he lowered his voice to a frantic, heated whisper. “All that bullshit you spouted to me, and I was foolish enough to listen to you . I have—I have been trying—trying —“

“Nii-sama, is everything alright?”

Seto immediately stiffened and snapped his jaw shut when he heard Mokuba’s voice behind him. He turned around cautiously and replied, “everything is fine, Mokuba,” voice artificially flat. “You remember Isis.” He continued rigidly, gesturing towards her.

“Oh yeah, of course!” Mokuba chirped. “Hey, all this stuff is yours, right?”

“Not precisely. I represent their owner in a variety of legal settings, but I do not own them outright. That is actually the business that brings me here today,” she glanced headlong at Seto, “to convey a message from their original owner. If you’ll excuse us, Mokuba, that is a subject that I need to discuss with your brother.”

“Oh, yeah sure.” Mokuba retreated slowly, shooting skeptical glances over his shoulder as he walked back across the hall.

Seto watched him go warily. “Looking for a place to eavesdrop, I’m sure,” he muttered under this breath. He turned back to her, the impassioned tumult raging in his eyes just a few moments prior now cloaked in stone. “So you actually do have a reason to be here?”

She nodded. “Were you aware that Industrial Illusions is the legal owner of these artifacts? Pegasus often employed me as the human face of the archaeological arm of his company, but I have no more authority over them than anyone else here today.”

“No,” Seto replied shortly. “What does that have to do with me ?”

Isis paused a moment to collect her thoughts before coming to the conclusion that there was no way to be delicate without sacrificing accuracy. “Pegasus is preparing to make his first public appearance since Duelist Kingdom, and to regain control of his company. As I’m sure you’re aware, the price of Industrial Illusions stock has fallen dramatically since his tournament; he will have to employ some very clever accounting strategies if he hopes to remain solvent going into the next fiscal year .

She sighed. “And these artifacts, which Pegasus once viewed as valuable investment and source of artistic inspiration, now strike him as a financial liability . He has asked me to negotiate a purchase with the Domino City Museum.”

Seto scoffed from the back of his throat. “He really thinks he can recover from that kind of disgrace ?”

“I’m sure people have said exactly the same thing about you.”

Seto smirked. “I know they have. The difference then was that I wasn’t one of them.”

“He wants to talk to you.” 

“I don’t care.”

“I told him that was how you would respond,” she replied warily. “But I urge you to do it. If not for yourself , then for your business.”

Her words seemed to roll off him. “I don’t see the necessity.”

“You know it’s impossible to move fully into the future without understanding the events of the past.”

“You know it’s impossible to take you seriously when you insist on talking like a fortune cookie.”

Isis’s eyes widened, as if in horror, at the turn that the conversation had taken. The last time they had spoken she had felt the high stone walls that segregated them beginning to rupture, she had seen a few flickers of dappled sunlight breaking through the darkness of his outer disposition. But now, everything that had once felt so close was thousands of miles and hundreds of centuries away, buried as deeply in the ground as the pharaoh’s tomb.

“Seto, what has gotten into you?” 

“I—what do you think?!” he stammered, making an effort to keep his voice to an acidic whisper this time. “Everything you told me was such—none of it was right ! And Yuugi! That whole spiel about the world starting over and peace and harmony and crap, that was all the figment of some delusional fantasy, wasn’t it? None of it meant anything—nothing that you ever told me—“

“Kaiba-kun? And Isis? Wow, what are you two doing here?” Yuugi’s voice, chiming with surprise and enthusiasm, rung out across the gallery walls as he rushed to meet them.  
“Yuugi.” Isis nodded, betraying no glimmer of the anxiety that had gripped her a few moments prior. Her eyes flickered to Seto who, back still to Yuugi, was struggling to swallow his agitation. “I am here conducting business on behalf of Industrial Illusions. It’s quite nice to see you again.”

“You too!” He exclaimed. “What business does Industrial Illusions have with the museum?”

“We are the owners of this exhibition, and all the artifacts therein.”

Yuugi’s face dropped slightly, and he began to speak in a slightly muted tone. “And you’re closing it?” 

“Hopefully not, though that decision will soon be in the hands of Domino itself.”

Yuugi nodded, and glanced reverently at the stone plaques and artifacts that lined the walls. “I see…are these yours, too?” he asked, turning his attention to the stacks of boxes.  
“Those are mine,” Seto hissed as he slowly turned to face Yuugi, only to be taken aback to discover that he was not alone. Standing about a foot behind, close enough to hear without being noticed, Jounouchi stood with his hands stuffed in his pockets and eyes fixed resolutely on the ceiling . When he realized that he had been spotted, he turned to Seto sheepishly.

“Hey.”

Seto blanched and spun abruptly around , failing to notice the question that Yuugi had directed at him.

“Kaiba is making a public endowment of some of his family’s old possessions,” Isis replied on his behalf, eyeing him quizzically. 

“Hm, that makes sense, I guess. You really are getting ready to take off, aren’t you?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Yeah, but fortunately it looks like you’re leaving a lot behind for us to remember you by, huh?” Jounouchi quipped as he approached them, taking stock of the volume of boxes.  
“I would never want to be remembered by these things ,” Seto retorted, voice sounding as if it had been frozen over .

“Do you think they’ll give the artifacts back to your family?” Yuugi interjected. “I mean, they do technically belong to your family, don’t they?”

Isis pursed her lips. “Perhaps from a historical perspective—not a financial one.”

“Oh…” Yuugi’s voice wandered down a lonely trail as he turned to gaze wistfully at the plaques and statues that lined the walls. 

Jounouchi took the opportunity to insert himself between Seto and Isis and began to speak to them in a low whisper. “Hey guys, I brought Yuugi here because he’s been feeling kind of…down recently, and I thought having a chance to talk to the pharaoh might cheer him up or something. If we could leave him alone with that for a little while, I think that’d be good…”

Isis nodded, Seto rolled his eyes, but they both retreated from Yuugi, who in the meantime had gravitated towards his own likeness hanging on the wall.  
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you think it’s quite serious?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. He’s just had a lot of changes to deal with I guess…losing a piece of your mind and all I think must be rough. I don’t know, maybe I’m just making it worse bringing him here.”

“I’m sure Yuugi is very grateful for your support. And how have you been faring?”

“Oh, hah, I’m fine. But I didn’t really have so much to lose.”

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the brisk and airy footsteps of the head of acquisitions, followed closely by a small army of movers and technicians. 

“Kaiba-sama and Ishtar-sama, so sorry to keep you waiting.” He bowed quickly, then began rifling through a thick stack of documents that was pinned to a clipboard in his hands. “We were simply overcome with the sheer volume of Kaiba-sama’s generous donation. It took our records department quite a while to sort out all the paperwork.” He made a few wiry gestures to the movers behind him, who began carefully transplanting Kaiba’s goods onto carts and dollies. “The city of Domino thanks you kindly for your generosity.” He bowed to Kaiba again, then turned to Isis. “If you follow me, Ishtar-sama, we can discuss your matter in my office.”

“Of course.” She turned to Seto. “I hope you will reconsider my proposal.” The two then disappeared down the hall, leaving both Seto and Jounouchi feeling uncomfortably exposed.

“What is her proposal ?” Jounouchi asked, poorly stifling the laughter in his voice. 

“It’s nothing.”

“I don’t know, sounds pretty serious to me, Kaiba,” he chuckled. “Isis’s plans usually end up being pretty important.”

Seto scoffed. “I’m well aware.”

The two stood in silence for a few moments, Seto supervising Mokuba as he perused the gallery, Jounouchi watching over Yuugi as he remained rooted in place. He cast a few cautious glances in Seto’s direction, coughed, and swayed slightly before beginning to speak again.

“Hey look, I’m really sorry about what happened last time. I never would have gone through something you didn’t want me looking at, only you left it out so I didn’t know! I never, well I hope you know I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Seto’s face paled slightly, and he refused to face him. “Don’t mention it .”

Across the gallery, Mokuba’s meandering took him to where Yuugi was standing vigil by Atem’s plaque. Though his body was there, his mind seemed far removed, wandering a distant plane that, once full of life and possibility, now rung with a hollow disenchanting silence.

“Yuugi?” Mokuba asked cautiously. “Are you okay?”

Yuugi blinked several times, twitched slightly around the edges, and after what seemed like an eternity managed to re-enter consciousness, as painfully as a fish emerging from the sea.

“Oh, hi, Mokuba.”

“That’s…you, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing towards the image on the wall. “And Seto?”

Yuugi sighed. “Not exactly.”

“The spirit from your puzzle.”

He nodded. “What I thought of as ‘the other me’ was really someone else entirely, someone who didn’t really belong in this world. He just needed me for a little while to get back on the right track.”

“And you helped him?”

“Yes, I’d like to think so. And he helped me, too. It was really each other that we needed.” He sighed again, and for a moment his expression seemed to deflate .

“And your spirit was from ancient Egypt?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why did Seto never tell me any of this?”

A flash of concern dashed across Yuugi’s eyes. “He hasn’t? I don’t know. That’s pretty strange. I mean, that’s basically been our entire lives for the past couple years.”  
“Hm.” They stood in a contemplative silence for a few moments. “So what will your life be now ?”

Yuugi laughed in a manner that somehow seemed to convey more sadness than pleasure. It sounded like something shattering. “I’m still trying to figure that out.” He paused. “Getting Atem back to the afterlife was like—being trapped in a cave, and there was this big boulder I had to push out of the way to get out. And now that the boulder’s gone, I can see that the cave isn’t what I thought it was. Everything looks different to me .”

“Different in what way?”

Yuugi shook his head. “I’m not sure that I could explain it.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sudden rumble of irate voices. “What part of ‘don’t mention it’ do you not understand?! I could not have made that any clearer to you.”  
“Sorry, sorry!” Jounouchi cried, throwing up his hands. “I didn’t think you could get so riled up by an innocent question .”

Seto seethed. “Just drop it.”

“Seto?”

Seto’s eyes snapped over to Mokuba, noting his position triangulated with Yuugi and the plaque, and sighed inwardly. This was a maze of explanations that he would have to hack through later.

“Let’s just leave, Mokuba,” he groaned. “Our business here is over.”


	5. Chapter 5

Mokuba stopped speaking several times before he started. He told himself he didn’t want to rope Seto into a potentially volatile conversation while he was driving, but even he had to acknowledge the weakness of his excuse—the way it seemed to leak and sway around in his mind.

“Seto…” he began cautiously, feeling heat rise to his checks and a thin sheen of sweat sprout down the back of his neck.

“What?” He replied gruffly, tightening his grip on the steering wheel but refusing to take his eyes off the road. The rush-hour streets were clogged with an iridescent syrup of sluggish motorists and dawdling pedestrians, all conspiring—Seto was certain—to seal off all possible escape routes.

“Well, I was talking to Yuugi back at the museum and he said something interesting…”

“That’s a first,” Seto snapped. He shoved his foot into the gas pedal in an attempt to sneak under the glare of the red light, but was met with the sharp groan of honking horns and angry expletives. “Fine, fine,” he sighed, shoving the car into reverse. “Fuck you too, man.”

“Uh, Seto, is now a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine, Mokuba,” he replied, unable to completely shake the irritation out of his voice. “Never do that,” he added abruptly, gesturing to the road beyond their windshield. “That was very dangerous of me.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks. Anyway, he told me, uh…”

“That he housed the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh?” Seto drawled. “It’s just an availability cascade of his little convoy—don’t get caught up in it.”

Mokuba considered this statement for a moment before continuing delicately. “Is that really true, though?”

Both let the question hang, allowing their thoughts to be swallowed by the blistering groans of traffic.

“All the things that happened to us…” Mokuba continued. “It never would have occurred to me at the time, but when you think about it, it explains so much! Especially at Battle City, I knew something crazy had to be going on—“

“Pareidolia and subjective validation,” Seto snorted. “Yuugi and his friends all think that they’re taking communion with some great spiritual entity—they’re just gawking at clouds and embers,” he grumbled.

Mokuba pushed out his bottom lip and balled his fists. “Reactive devaluation! Backfire effect! Belief bias! Semmelweis reflex!” He exclaimed. “You’re guilty of all those, you know that?”

Seto eyed him sharply from the corner of his eye, but did not immediately reply.

“You do know, don’t you?” Mokuba continued, his tone now somewhat calmer and more dejected. “I mean, you went to Egypt after Battle City—you wouldn’t have done that if you really thought there was no connection, would you?”

He gaped up at Seto’s face, which was impassive except for a small tremor that stole across his eyelids and raced down his throat.

“Cognitive dissonance.” He replied mutely, struggling to maintain a sour glower on the road.

“Oh.” Mokuba nodded. Not taking his eyes off his brother’s painfully rigid face.

When their car slowed under the next stop light, Seto sighed and draped his arms—as if deflating—over the steering wheel. “I should have told you, I know. Everything was just very…ridiculous.”

Mokuba laughed softly. “It’s alright, big brother.” He paused. “Will you tell me now?”

“I’d rather not.” He sighed sullenly. “But fine, fine whatever: Yuugi claims that when he assembled the Millennium Puzzle, he—inherited—the spirit of an Egyptian pharaoh with it. Who didn’t have any memories or any knowledge of who he was or why he was there. And who helped him play Duel Monsters. Does this sound convincing yet?”

“Keep going.”

“Well,” Kaiba had reacquired his tense stance at the steering wheel and began to direct the car in abrupt jolts and lurches, electing exasperated honks and gripes from the nearby vehicles. He continued through tightly gritted teeth. “Bakura had a similar experience with the Millennium Ring, Malik with the Rod, and Pegasus with the Eye. Shortly after establishing contact with these artifacts, it appears that one’s mental faculties rapidly begin to deteriorate.

“The unifying mythology was that all of these items were instilled with magical powers by their ancient Egyptian creators, and it was the duty of their owners to return them to Egypt in order to restore peace and love and harmony and all that,” he waved his hand dismissively. “So that’s what happened.”

Mokuba eyed him skeptically. “That’s a very condensed synopsis.”

“That’s the essence of it.”

“That’s hardly anything!” Mokuba protested. He sat back in his chair for a moment, stunned. “Wow,” he whispered. He gazed at the buzzing crowds streaming past their windows. They moved and mingled just as they had mere moments before, only now his way of seeing them had changed. To think that these crowds of people, leading lives that felt as straight and simple as smooth planes of concrete, were bathing in a secret sun of magic, were hovering millimeters above the dark greedy jaws of danger.

“How did that relate to us, though?” he asked. “You never had a Millennium item, but that guy on the stone tablet in the museum looked exactly like you.”

“Supposedly, I was supposed to have one. It…fell into the wrong hands.”

“Really?” Mokuba’s tone hovered somewhere on the borderline between excitement and trepidation. “Which one was it?”

“The Millennium Rod. It was stolen by Malik before Isis had the opportunity to give it to me.”

“Oh…” Mokuba’s face darkened. His memories of Malik from Battle City—his hollow, metallic laugh, the way lightning seemed to snap at his footsteps, the piercing darkness that lurked in the corners of his eyes and the shadows of his face—were still brutal enough to make his stomach feel bruised. “He was…horrible. Well, he was up until the end…” Mokuba mused as he recalled Malik’s final duel with Yuugi, the way a soft and supple clarity had settled over his shoulders as his life points drained away. And after the duel he had spoken in gentle lilac tones and draped himself in a cloak of demure remorse.

“That was the effect the Rod had on him.” Seto’s words seemed to pick up where Mokuba’s reminiscences left off. “Possession of the items, Isis tells me, endues their owner with the— _essence_ —of their previous owner, clouding their mind and affecting their behavior—sometimes turning people against themselves. Yuugi is unique in that he found a way to— _bond_ —with the— _thing_ —inside him.

It was necessary for me to return to Egypt because—despite the fact that the rod never fell into my possession—I was still the vector of its— _spirit_ ,” he simmered. “A hollow vessel,” he added to himself.

“That’s so cool!” Mokuba exclaimed. “And not, I guess.” He sighed. “I’m glad you never got the Millennium Rod—when Malik had it he was totally insane! And even afterwards he seemed so—lost.”

Seto didn’t respond.

“But why did he look like you?” Mokuba continued. “And the pharaoh looked like Yuugi. Does that mean, like, you _are_ —“

“I am not that man!” Seto exclaimed. He lost sight of the lines of the road and swerved abruptly into the neighboring lane, narrowly avoiding the prow of an oncoming semi-truck that honked furiously as it skidded by.

Seto hastily pulled over and collapsed into his seat, groaning softly behind his hands.

“I’m sorry. Don’t do that, either.”

Now that they had come to a stop, Mokuba had the opportunity to take stock of his brother completely. The sight of his trembling fingers, slumped shoulders, and dropping neck struck him deeply, as if someone had pried apart the bones and muscle that encased his heart.

“Seto?” He ventured. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He stammered. “Let’s just sit here for a little while.”

Mokuba counted the minutes, alternating between gazing out the window and at his feet—anywhere but Seto. He had to occasionally remind himself to breathe. When Seto finally did speak again, Mokuba nearly jumped in his seat.

“It’s a complicated issue.” He muttered icily. “We seem to have somewhat of a…dialogic relationship.”

“You met him?” Mokuba was careful to keep his voice cool and soothing.

Seto straightened up and nodded, taking several deep breaths. “Briefly. In Egypt. We established some sort of rapport, I suppose.”

“Was he like Malik, when he was—possessed?”

Seto gazed thoughtfully into the distance. “Yes and no. He was at first, but he was possessed himself, I think…” Seto’s voice slipped away to a  time and place that Mokuba sensed was blooming and bustling in Seto’s mind, but would wither under the harsh heavy glare of reality.

Mokuba extended his hand, clasping Seto’s shoulder. “It’s okay, y’know, to not know everything all the time. To not be able to explain it.”

Seto gritted his teeth. “That’s never what I had a problem with,” he replied grimly, brushing Mokuba’s hand away.

“Then what was it? What’s the problem that keeps you from believing them—even after you’ve seen so much evidence?”

Seto shook his head. “The problem is that I do believe it.”

“But, why is that bad?” His brows furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” Seto shuddered slightly. “I can’t articulate it, not right now.”

Mokuba nodded. “I understand. Will you tell me when you can?”

Seto smiled softly, reaching out to tousle Mokuba’s hair. “I promise.”

Seto slowly returned to the metallic flow of traffic, making sure to make a show of checking his mirrors and activating the turn signal. The two sat in silence for a few moments, appreciating the steady beat of time against their skin.

“I don’t want to see you…run away, Seto.”

Seto turned to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, straining to keep his voice artificially casual.

“Moving to America. The way you talk to people.”

“We’re moving to America for the business opportunities. I address people with the exact level of cordiality that I determine they deserve.”

Mokuba scoffed. “Big brother, you know how when people get into arguments, they’re always supposed to ask themselves whether they want to be right or be happy?”

“Sure,” Seto replied dryly, giving Mokuba the impression that he had never heard of such a line of reasoning, nor did he particularly care to.

“Well, right now you’re not either of those things. But if there’s a chance, even a small chance, that someone could help you get there, wouldn’t you want to take it?”

Mokuba’s question hung in the air around Seto’s ears, piercing and expectant. “I’m not sure,” he muttered grudgingly.

“Do you want to find out?”

Seto grimaced. “No. I can figure this out on my own.”

Mokuba sighed in exasperation. “Irrational escalation. And illusory superiority.”

Seto scoffed. “Hardly illusory.”

The two peeled away from the congested heart of the city like a shuttle launching itself off from the skin of its planet and plunging headlong into the welcoming darkness of space. They were going home. As Seto pulled into the garage of their apartment complex, Mokuba was struck with a sudden thought—wrenched from the dusty corners of his memory and now thrust into full view.

“Isn’t it like that game we used to play, when we were little? When we pretended that we were dragon tamers—wielding monsters with incredible powers—the ability to obliterate evil and transcend time!” He giggled under the soft caress of his childhood memories, then unhooked his seatbelt and reached for the door. Speaking over his shoulder, he continued, “You know, if we had never been adopted by Gozaburo I bet you would have loved the idea of having a connection with an ancient Egyptian spirit, and getting to save the world. You would have thought that it was the most awesome adventure ever!”

Mokuba shut the door behind him, leaving Seto to ruminate in silence. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel—letting Mokuba’s final message roll over in his head— then frowned.

 “Hypothesis contrary to fact.”


	6. Chapter 6

“If anyone asks, this was your idea.”

 “But nii-sama,” Mokuba protested, “You never let _anyone_ take credit for one of your brilliant ideas.”

“This was not a brilliant idea.” Seto seethed, then turned over his shoulder to glare at Mokuba. “Stop smiling.”

 Mokuba not only refused to stop smiling, but began to giggle softly under his breath. Seto’s scowl deepened. “This is not funny,” he muttered, hand tightening around the handle of his santoku and chopping speed increasing considerably.

“You don’t think it’s even a _little_ funny?”

“Am I laughing?”

Mokuba directed his scrutiny away from his sizzling blocks of tofu and towards his brother—his clothes ironed into rigid plates of cotton and leather, jaw clenched, engulfed by an alarmingly large pile of aggressively axed mushrooms.

“No.”

“So what _exactly_ gives you the impression that I find _any_ aspect of this to be in any way _humorous_?”

Mokuba sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay, I take it back—this is all very serious.” He giggled again. “I’m not taking the fall for you though—if someone asks you have to be able to explain it yourself.”

Seto emitted a low growl somewhere in the back of his throat, succeeding only in eliciting more laughter from Mokuba.

“Seto,” Mokuba began gently, “do you need my help?”

“What?! No. Of course not.”

Mokuba leaned against his brother’s shoulder, careful to avoid the shooting chunks of mushroom that were darting through the air around them like shards of smoldering shrapnel. “I think you need my help. Here—” he gently pried Seto’s hand away from the knife handle and pulled him towards the bar stools next to the kitchen island. “Just let the mushrooms recover for a minute and sit down.”

Seto’s face darkened into a scowl, but he grudgingly complied.

“Good! Now, tell me how your day was.”

Seto narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking? You were with me all day.”

“Just pretend.”

“Why?”

Mokuba sighed in exasperation. “We’re making conversation! That’s what you do.” Seto remained rigid and silent. “Just answer the question, nii-sama.”

“No.”

Mokuba sighed and stomped his foot. “You’re impossible.”

“I know how to converse, Mokuba.”

“Not outside of business! Not without offending everyone!”

“I talk to you.”

“One data point.” He extended his index finger towards Seto’s face to emphasize his argument. “Not enough evidence to draw a rigorous conclusion.” He paused.  “You’re freaking out and you know that I’m right, and you’re going to be miserable all night if you don’t get comfortable with it now.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“So answer the question.”

“I did.”

Mokuba pursed his lips. “Elaborate.”

“It was fine.”

The two glared at each other for a moment.

“This isn’t a game, nii-sama,” Mokuba replied quietly. “I know you’re trying, but there’s no point in putting forth a little effort if you’re not willing to go all the way.”

Seto scoffed. “Since when did you become so didactic. I thought that’s what Atem was for.”

“Well, someone has to step in now that he’s gone.” He smiled. “Do you want me to go first?”

Seto shrugged. “Fine whatever.”

Mokuba’s eyes lit up. “Well, pretty much every day during summer vacation is better than average, so that’s a good start. Though, having to go to work when the weather’s so nice is…not the best. _But_ —” he paused for dramatic effect, “I think that the best part of the day hasn’t happened yet.”

 “You think so.”

“Yup—and you better believe it too, or else you’re not going to be a very good host.”

“And you’re not going to be a very good chef if you let the tofu burn.”

“Oh!” Mokuba rushed over to the burner where his tofu blocks were violently sizzling. “You’re not off the hook, though!” He called over his shoulder as he fumbled with the frying pan. “I still want to hear about your day.”

Seto sighed and leaned against the counter, idly turning a fragment of mushroom between his fingers. “Well…I went to the market…”

“Good, good.”

“And went to work.”

“Yes.”

“And now I’m here.”

“Hey, they’re done!” Mokuba exclaimed triumphantly as he held his pan of fried tofu under Seto’s nose. “What do I do now?”

“Remove the oil.” He paused for a moment, then continued dryly. “So how did I do?”

Mokuba bit his bottom lip. “Uh…good!”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Maybe if we tried a different topic?” He cupped his chin in his palm and tilted his head to the side. “What was the last cool thing that you did?”

“The last what?”

“I don’t know,” he turned his attention to the gently simmering saucepan of soymilk. “The last thing you did that you’re proud of—that was important to you.”

Seto stared at the faces in his mushrooms. “I have no idea.”

“Well,” Mokuba replied, doing his best to sound optimistic, “maybe you should think about it. And start slicing the beef—unless you want dinner to be late.”

Seto seethed but obeyed his brother’s directions, toiling largely in vain to quiet the reeling in his head with the smooth rhythm of his knife against the worn wooden cutting board. The two continued their work in silence, allowing their thoughts to be enveloped in billows of thick, sweet steam and the soothing hum of softly bubbling soy milk.

That was, until it came time to set the table. Mokuba vacillated on the threshold of the kitchen door, peering down the hallway leading to the dining room that—even when fully illuminated—seemed to wallow in an impenetrable dourness and gloom.

“Remind me never to take advice from you,” Seto scoffed as he noticed Mokuba’s trepidation. “At least I don’t cower in fear at empty hallways.”

“That doesn’t invalidate my argument!”

“Hn. It certainly proves you’re no pinnacle of daring.”

Mokuba shot a defiant glare over his shoulder, pushed out his chin, and began to march down the hall—clutching the stack of chargers tightly against his chest.

As Mokuba’s footsteps died in the distance, Seto cautiously peered around the kitchen. He heard only the maddening drone of silence—wide, vacant, empty—felt only the flat expanse of floor beneath his feet and the santoku—still gripped firmly, resolutely, in his fist. He gritted his teeth and roughly kneaded the tightness in his chest. “I wish you would stop pushing me,” he whispered, wondering—even as the words fell—whether he really meant it.

\--

“I wanted to apologize for what I said the last time we met—” she paused. “Can I help you with anything? I hate to sit around feeling useless.”

Seto smirked. “I think I can handle it,” he replied dryly. “Though if feeling useless was such a _concern_ for you, you could have easily avoided the situation entirely by not arriving twenty minutes early. Now, are you actually going to apologize, or continue talking about how badly you _wanted_ to?”

Isis frowned. “I was anticipating heavier traffic.”

Seto laughed—a short, caustic bark. “Of course you were.” Having arranged the dishes to his satisfaction, he sat across from her at the dining table, leaning as far back in his chair as the antique polished mahogany would allow. “To tell the truth, I did consider your suggestion. But the law moves slowly—it’s ancient and inefficient and easily biased. I’ve never trusted those worthless bureaucrats to handle anything important. Plus,” he added gruffly, “I’d rather not be laughed out of my job trying to explain to a bunch of idiot lawyers that I’d rather not do business with Industrial Illusions because its president trapped the souls of Mokuba and I in playing cards.”

“So you intend to do nothing?” She paused, pinching her lips. “He will seek you out—if he has to.”

 “Hn. If there’s going to be a fight then he’s going to have to ask for it.” He smirked. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to prepare myself.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

He chuckled. “It’s as if you didn’t know me at all.”

She smiled. “How is Mokuba?”

Seto’s jaw stiffened slightly. “Fine.”

“You talked with him?”

He nodded. “He had noticed several…irregularities over the years, obviously—Yuugi’s mood swings, the alarmingly high number of people put into comas by playing card games—he told me that he had suspected it had something to do with Pegasus or his associates, some plot they had to discredit us.” He sighed. “On the whole he accepted the magical-ancient-Egyptian-spirits-traveling-through-time-to-save-the-world-from-the-clutches-of-evil explanation much more easily than I did.”

“You did set the bar fairly low.”

Seto crossed his arms and frowned at the table. “How is…your brother.”

“Malik is doing well. Thank you for asking.” She sipped her tea, ignoring the fact that it was still uncomfortably warm. “Just as the pharaoh’s spirit has finally found peace—he too now has an opportunity to rest.” She smiled. “He seems to be adjusting to his newfound freedoms quite readily.”

Seto nodded stiffly. “Okay.”

“Not that the shadows of the past can dissipate over night, but he appears to be experiencing a new dawn—so to speak. It’s quite comforting to see.”

“Good.”

“About you I now know better than to ask.”

Seto shrugged. “There’s nothing to say.”

Isis raised an eyebrow, but chose to remain silent.

\--

“All I’m saying is don’t eat anything that you haven’t seen Mokuba eat first.”

Anzu rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m just kidding! Well, half-kidding. You never know with Kaiba. I mean, you haven’t forgotten the spaghetti thing, right?”

“Weren’t you just over here last week? And he didn’t try to kill you then, did he?”

“He looked like he was considering it by the time I left.”

“If that’s the case, I’m sure you had no one to blame for it but yourself.”

“Don’t you think this is just a _little bit_ suspicious?”

“People change, Katsuya,” Shizuka chided him.

Anzu scowled and was about to scold Jounouchi further when the door in front of them abruptly swung open—Yuugi’s hand still hovering above the knocker.

“You do _realize_ I can hear everything you’re saying, right?”

“Hi Kaiba-kun! Thanks for inviting us over.”

“Yuugi.” Seto nodded “And for your _information_ ,” he continued, directing his attention towards Jounouchi, “I hadn’t been _planning_ on poisoning on you, but I believe I may now be starting to reconsider.”

“Great, now I feel _way_ better,” Jounouchi muttered as they stepped into the foyer.

“You two take three steps back for every two forward, don’t you?” Shizuka asked, giggling at her brother’s glare.

“He just enjoys being melodramatic.” Anzu replied dismissively.

“I do not!”

The four followed Seto through the house, as small and dark against the empty white expanse of the Kaiba mansion’s bare walls as a cluster of debris floating through the aching blackness of space. Even since Jounouchi’s visit, the rooms had become considerably more bare—stripped of their protective layers of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, and packing tape and now almost entirely devoid of furniture, entering each room felt eerily akin to stepping into an empty coffin that was fervently hunting fresh prey.

“Mokuba,” Seto called as they entered the dining room, “our guests are here.”

\--

Of all the pairs of eyes glowing in the room, the hardest for Seto to ignore were Mokuba’s. Should he have the audacity to lapse into silence for longer than six and a half minutes (he was sure Mokuba was timing just as closely as he was), Mokuba—whose face had just moments ago been bright and bubbly—would turn to him tersely, shooting a stony cold glare that sent daggers digging into Seto’s chest. Though no words passed between them, both Kaiba brothers had a talent for expounding volumes of meaning with a minimum of syllables. Should Seto choose to ignore his brother’s warning, the glares would continue at thirty second intervals until Seto found a way—no matter how inconsequential—to contribute constructively to the conversation. A non-constructive contribution was met with a swift kick to his shins.

Seto had the feeling that he would be sporting several conspicuous bruises on his lower legs by the end of the evening. Mokuba had always had a tendency to underestimate his own strength.

“The majority of the pieces in the Domino Museum will be replaced with replications. I’m currently working with Industrial Illusions to transport the originals back to their home in Egypt.”

“All of them are going back?”

Isis nodded. “The bigger pieces; Pegasus would have preferred that they remain in Domino, but ultimately the museum decided that they weren’t in the financial state to justify the permanent acquisition of the originals. The replications were made several years ago and are significantly less difficult to maintain.”

Yuugi nodded morosely. “It won’t feel the same, though—will it?”

“You know it won’t make a difference now,” Seto cut it. Yuugi turned to him, a kind of muted shock and horror welling behind his eyes. “Yuugi,” he continued, “when you paid your little visit to the museum—you didn’t _feel_ a whole lot, did you?”

When Yuugi’s only response was an aghast expression, Seto continued. “You made your pilgrimage to this giant rock—this structure that has served as the _doorway to your destiny_ , and—tell me—didn’t you look at it and feel—nothing at all?”

“Kaiba—” someone began to protest—he didn’t care who. Seto merely shrugged. “He isn’t trying to deny it.” An icy, challenging tone clung to the contours of his voice, as if daring the others at the table to defy him. He noted with a gleam of triumph that Mokuba hadn’t determined that this comment was worthy of an assault on his shins. “So what difference does it make,” he continued more quietly, “if the thing you see is real or fake? What difference does it make if it exists at all?”

For a moment the room was completely silent. Then everyone began to talk at once.

“How can you say that!?”

“It does matter—”

“It’s a priceless artifact—”

“It’s an artifact from a time that is no longer relevant,” Seto interjected. “No one is ever going to need to look at those tablets ever again. They’ve served their purpose and now they’re irrelevant. Worthless.”

“I can see you’re not one to be swayed by arguments of sentimentality,” Isis responded.

Seto eyed her suspiciously. “Not in this case, no.”

“And what, then, would you say to Yuugi—who is seeking a tangible way to maintain an emotional connection with this significant period of his life?”

“Stop trying.” He sighed. “Look: Yuugi had a spirit living inside his head, and now he doesn’t. There’s no tangible way to connect with a spirit—that’s just not going to happen.”

\--

Seto took solace in the silence now. The silence was the bright, fresh clarity of a clear, brisk morning. It was the smooth, supple current of night that flowed between the stars and polished the moon. It was clearing the cobwebs and echoes and splinters from his mind and finally having space to let his thoughts roam and wander.

Mokuba was almost certainly timing him. He knew exactly how much time it took to lay out the manju, and certainly would not hesitate to barrel down into his bunker and drag him back to the battlefield the moment he began to suspect that Seto was stalling. But for now he was willing to risk the threat of his brother’s wrath if it bought him a few moments of serenity.

He tried to shake the grip of his headache; the pressure bearing down on the backs of his eyes only seemed to sharpen. The lights in the kitchen seemed to scream into him; the pale sweet smell of the manju was sending acid down his throat; the counters, floor, walls were pressing deep into him, tightening their grasp on his veins and sending his heart racing.

“Kaiba-kun…are you okay?”

“Fine.” He gasped. “What do you want.”

“Mokuba-kun suggested I help you set up the dessert.”

Seto snorted, struggling to soothe out the ragged tremor in his voice. “So he sent a mercenary.”

“Sorry?”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I don’t need your help.”

To his chagrin, Yuugi stepped closer. “Manju! These look so good! Did you make them?”

He nodded. “Mokuba and I did, yes.”

“Wow!” Yuugi exclaimed, cradling one of the pale pink dumplings in his palm, careful not to disturb the thin film of rice powder on the surface. “So I was right to try to recruit you when you came over.” When Seto didn’t respond, he continued. “What’s inside? I can’t wait to try one.”

Seto shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Yuugi ate cautiously and in silence, never taking his eyes from the shadow-stricken figure by his side.

“Yuugi—”

“Yes?”

“Nevermind.”

Yuugi continued speaking between bites. “You know, I have the same problem as you. I love playing games and having fun, but in a room full of people I can’t hear my own thoughts after a while. Sometimes you just have to take a break for a moment, it helps put everything back in perspective.”

“That is not my problem,” Seto growled.

Yuugi shrugged. “Different diagnosis, same symptoms. I know why you’re doing this, though. All this.” He gestured to the platter of manju. “I’ve felt the same impulse, I guess. When you’ve broken away from everything else, the only thing you have left is to break away from yourself. It’s always made me feel really excited to accomplish something that I never thought I would be capable of. These are really good, by the way.” He snatched another manju from the platter and turned to leave.

“Yuugi.”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, Kaiba-kun!” He started back down the hall towards the dining room.

“Yuugi.”

“Yes?”

“It’s not coming back, is it? That—feeling.”

Yuugi smiled sadly. “No, I don’t think so. You were right, the tablet in the museum is just a stone now.” His eyes took on a distant, dreamy expression, as if they were still soaking in scenes of Egyptian battlefields and majestic monsters.

“And that’s…okay with you?”

A small tremor passed through Yuugi’s body. “I’ve been better,” he replied, voice light but shaking slightly. “It’s strange feeling so alone, after all that has happened,” he laughed. “Funny to imagine it being hard to _not_ share your body with an Egyptian spirit.” His hand traveled up his chest, resting on the ghost of the Millennium Puzzle. “As hard as it is at times, I try to see this as an opportunity. We’ve solved the mystery of the pharaoh’s identity, and now we can work on the mysteries of ourselves.”

Once Yuugi had evaporated into the darkness, Seto glared—eyes bitter and stormy—at the spot where he had stood. “Why does everyone I know insist on spewing this self-actualizing bullshit.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Oh, he just does this type of thing sometimes.” Mokuba shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

It had been about fifteen minutes since Seto’s disappearance, muttering something under his breath about preparing dessert and retreating quickly down the hall towards the kitchen. It had been about five minutes since Yuugi, insisting that he could find the bathroom on his own, had gone to find him.

“Hey,” Jounouchi lowered his voice and gestured towards the two empty chairs, “suspicious, right? You think they’re making out somewhere?”

Mokuba scrunched his face and giggled. “Ew, I’d be very surprised.”

“More surprising things have happened.”

Mokuba rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that’s relevant here…”

“What are you two whispering about over there?” Shizuka asked, leaning against Jounouchi’s shoulder. “It’s not polite.”

“Nothing, nothing,” Jounouchi tried to brush her aside. “It’s just a rule, you know? Two people at a party both disappear around the same time for a _long_ time—we’re allowed to make certain assumptions…”

“Katsuya!” She cried in mock horror, playfully slapping him on the arm. “Dueling each other is more likely.”

“Eh—but Kaiba doesn’t duel any more, remember? And you know he’s got to fill that _deep_ , _dark_ hole in his life with _something_ —”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Jounouchi,” Anzu snapped. “Let’s change the subject. Now.”

“Kaiba has retired from dueling?” Isis asked, voice low and cool.

“Yeah, effectively,” Mokuba replied. “He gave all his cards to Yuugi’s grandfather.”

“How—do you know why, exactly?”

Mokuba shrugged. “Not really. He said there was no point in having them anymore.”

Isis’ expression stiffened slightly, but she did not reply.

“Enough about Kaiba!” Shizuka announced. She turned to Mokuba, eyes bright and smile blossoming. “What can we do around here for fun while we wait for dessert?”

“Here? Huh, basically nothing. The Kaiba mansion really isn’t the best place to go to have _fun_ , if you know what I mean. All the fun we had here growing up we had to work pretty hard to make for ourselves. Gozaburo didn’t have any patience for games and hobbies, and no sense of humor.” He paused. “There is one place that might be cool, though. I haven’t been there in ages so maybe it’s not as cool as I remember it—it probably won’t seem as amazing now as it did then, but when we were little it was basically the best thing ever. I only hope Seto hasn’t deactivated it.”

“What is it?”

“Well,” Mokuba explained. “Everything associated with Kaiba Corp has always had really tight security, especially this place. The whole house is wired, there are these video intercoms installed in pretty much every room,” he gestured towards the room’s far wall, where a small, thin monitor was mounted on the wall. “Gozaburo used them to spy on us, among other things, but we found a way to covertly hack into the system and they kind of built a game around it—like a virtual world embedded in ours.” He shook his head in an attempt to reorganize his dusty memories. “It’s kind of hard to explain—it’d be easier if I just show you. C’mon, we can only turn it on from the computer room.”

Mokuba continued trying to explain as they abandoned the bright light and sparkling fixtures of the dining room and descended into the crypt of the Kaiba mansion. His words rushed out and tripped over each other in their excitement to finally be freed from his memory and rush about in the open air. His voice provided enough warmth and light to compensate for the icy gloom that otherwise would have engulfed them.

“It was a big secret, of course,” he prattled. “But I don’t think Seto would mind me showing you now. He was so proud of it when they built it—he showed me how to use it even though he really shouldn’t have. They could have gotten into so much trouble…”

They were walking down a narrow hall lined with rusty pipes and cobwebs. The flickering lights sent sharp shadows racing along the walls. Mokuba, however, was too enchanted to notice that he should have been scared. He paused in front of a thick iron door, wiped the dust and cobwebs off the security key pad—and after a deep metallic click confirmed that he did in fact still remember the passcode—heaved the door open with a heavy groan.

Entering the computer room was like stepping inside the brain of an aged dragon rendered in silicon and copper. The walls were coated in banks of flickering lights, multicolored veins of wire, and wheezing dust-chocked fans. Despite the toll that years of neglect had taken, every fixture resonated with a cool, calm, and thoughtful intelligence that was immune to fatigue and famine and had not closed its eyes since the day it was born.

“Back when this room was built computers were still really big, and really expensive. Gozaburo bought two—one for his office, and this one for here. They were some of the most powerful privately owned computers when we got them.” Mokuba spoke over his shoulder as he rummaged through a series of file boxes stacked in the far corner. “Yes! I knew he hadn’t gotten down here yet.”

He dragged one of the boxes back to the terminal and began rifling through its contents—an extensive collection of neatly labeled floppy disks. “This one was mainly used for monitoring the security systems of the house, but eventually Gozaburo started letting them use it to study—to build models and stuff I guess. They wrote a ton of these programs—adventure games and stuff. But this one was the best!” He presented the object of his search to the curious circle of onlookers—a bundle of three black floppy disks bound together by a rubber band and labeled with a neatly printed list of numbers:

38 84 22 95 87 39 60 42 11 82 42 84 41 40 87 18 42 22 12 11 41

“I don’t get it. What is it?” Jounouchi asked as he strained to read the numbers in the semidarkness.

“They called it Hiruko. It’s an adventure game. Set in this house. Let me show you!” Mokuba bounded over to the seat in front of the terminal, punched a series of keys on the keyboard, and the primary monitor sprung to live with a jagged spark of static electricity.

“This is the security system,” Mokuba explained. The display was split into twelve panels, each recording a room in the mansion or one of the gardens and balconies. “Now,” Mokuba bit his lower lip and scrunched his brows, “assuming that the files aren’t corrupted,” he delicately unwrapped the disks and placed them into the slots near the base of the computer, “it should work!”

The monitor flickered black for a moment then sprung back to life with a weighty jolt. Overlaid on the screen were three transparent figures, all roughly in the form of a heavily pixelated young child.

“Who do you want to be?” Mokuba asked, fingers already flickering over the keys.

“Uh, the left one?” Jounouchi guessed.

“Ha okay.” The figure Jounouchi had chosen was briefly highlighted, then all three disappeared.

“Our first task is to figure out where he is.”

“How do we do that?”

“We have to make him reveal himself,” Mokuba drawled with a roll of his eyes, as if this should have been entirely self-evident. “You can’t just have your characters _appear_ in a place like this. They need to know that it’s safe first, that they can trust you.”

“So how do we get him to come out?”

“Answering questions.” Mokuba began conversing with the keyboard again, becoming so engrossed in the swirling lines of coded messages that sprinted across the screen that he seemed to momentarily forget the presence of his guests. “Almost done…” he murmured. “They came up with a lot of different codes, and the one you’re supposed to use gets chosen randomly at the start of the program. It’s hard to remember them all…”

As Mokuba and the machine continued their encrypted conversation, the images on the monitor slowly began to change. With each question answered correctly, some of the panels would increase in size while others shrunk into the background. Gradually, and with many sighs that alternated between triumphant and deeply aggravated from Mokuba, an image of the library—shrouded in the dusty semidarkness of the evening—completely dominated the monitor.

“Got it!” He exclaimed.  “Now we have to choose a weapon.” Three images appeared on top of their view of the library—all executed in the same crude and simplistic style of the character avatars—but just distinguishable as a sword, a rifle, and a book.

“They all have special abilities, but they have weaknesses too—so it’s important to choose carefully.”

Jounouchi leaned closer to the monitor, carefully scrutinizing each of the images in turn. “Which would you choose, Mokuba?”

“This time—the sword.” The image of the sword was briefly highlighted, then all three vanished.

It took a moment for them to realize that anything had changed. Staring at a nearly static image of the library, Jounouchi was about to remark that this was the most boring computer game he had ever seen when a ghostly figure—pale and fragile and thin as dying smoke—slowly coagulated into one of the many chairs that lined the large table in the center of the room, neck arched over a thick, leather-bound book splayed open before him on the table.

Jounouchi’s initial instinct was to retract in horror, verify that Mokuba had indeed been correct in claiming that the library was haunted, run from the Kaiba mansion, and never come back. However, there was something in the image of the little boy reading the book that caught his breath and froze his fear. Perhaps it was his thin fingers that seemed to tremble as they turned the page; the small, defeated slope in his shoulders; or his eyes, overly large, dark, and tumultuous, that seemed to both absorb the darkness that surrounded him and rage sharply—defiantly—against it. The boy may have had a body of steam, smoke, and mist, but he had a soul as loud and fierce as fire and a mind as sharp and clear as the icy winter sun.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Mokuba asked, noticing the transfixed expressions surrounding him.

“You and Kaiba made this? When you were little kids?”

“Well, I wasn’t really involved that much,” Mokuba conceded sheepishly. “It was mostly Seto and—”

“What is going on here?” A sharp, bludgeoning voice shattered the enchanted veil that had embraced them with a brusque and unforgiving thrust. Jounouchi was suddenly aware of the cold, musty air, the throbbing of the computer’s fans, the aggressive force of the floor against his feet and the stifling weight of his own skin.

“What—what are you doing with that?” Kaiba asked again, voice as flat and brittle as splintering ice. “Get away from that thing!” He rushed towards the computer, roughly shoving his guests from his path, and began ripping and tearing at its many exposed wires—creating a flurry of angry sparks that bit at his arms and shoulders.

“Nii-sama!” Mokuba cried. “Please stop! I’m sorry! I thought it would be fun! I didn’t think you would mind if I showed them—”

“No.” His tone was cold, but his voice smelled of burning copper and melting plastic. “Just—” He turned to his guests and blanched, closed his eyes, and swallowed deeply. His fingers didn’t stop twitching on the exposed wires. “Just don’t do it again.” He poured all his resolve into keeping his voice low and stable, leaving nothing to prevent his jaw from trembling as he spoke.

And as suddenly as he had swept into the room, he was gone—as if having dissipated into the darkness around them.

“I don’t understand…” Mokuba murmured. “He always loved this.”

“Look,” Isis gestured towards the half-forgotten monitor, on which the panels depicting the various rooms in the mansion had reappeared and Kaiba could be seen tracing a path out the front door and down the front walk. “Do you think he’ll be alright?”

“I have no idea…”

“I’ll go find him,” Jounouchi volunteered. “Don’t worry, Mokuba—he’ll be fine.”

For the first time he could remember, Jounouchi was grateful that Kaiba was affluent and vain enough to drive a luxury sports car. Those needlessly sharp, elegant edges, the violent rumble of the engine, and hostile glare of the headlights were all he needed to distinguish Kaiba’s escape pod from the slow, soft, nondescript cars that wafted through Domino’s nighttime streets.

He was, however, still incredibly ungrateful that Kaiba was one of the most reckless drivers that he had ever encountered. Every turn was followed by the slamming and squealing of brakes and the irate curses of disgruntled pedestrians. He turned the streets into a tangled, heaving mess that Jounouchi was loath to unwind—a process made all the more difficult by the fact that, rather than retreating into the dark and serenity of the countryside as Jounouchi had anticipated, Kaiba was burrowing into the heart of Domino’s congested suburban district.

The streets grew tight and narrow, and Jounouchi was so focused on chasing Kaiba’s shadowy footprints through the web-like cacophony of light and sound that he didn’t notice making four right turns in a row.

Kaiba’s vehicle screeched to a halt, giving Jounouchi just enough space to brake behind him. Jounouchi stepped out of his car to approach him, and was thrust roughly over the hood—the cold heavy fang of a gun pressed tightly against his skull.

“What. Are. You. Doing. Idiot!” Kaiba demanded between gritted teeth and labored breaths, grinding Jounouchi’s face deeper into the metal. “If it’s my life that you’re after, you might want to work a little harder at going unnoticed.”

“Wha—” Jounouchi flayed under Kaiba’s grasp. “I’m not trying to kill you, jerk! And by the way, you seemed to be doing a pretty good job of trying to get that done yourself!”

At the sound of his voice, the grip of the gun lessened slightly, and Jounouchi found enough room in his ribcage to breathe.  “Just get off me, will you?” He grumbled. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Jounouchi sighed in relief as he felt Kaiba step away, the piercing anger in his body seeming to dissipate into a dull throb of exhaustion. “You were following me,” he offered as an explanation. “It would have been unwise to underestimate the magnitude of the situation.”

“Yeah, sure, sure,” Jounouchi grumbled as he rubbed the bruise forming on the back of his head. “I guess I should have expected you’d—”

Jounouchi had turned back to Kaiba, expecting to see in his face something between a demeaning sneer and cold indifference. The sight he was met with in its stead set his blood on fire and wiped his mind clear of all but one loud, fluorescent thought.

Kaiba was still pointing the gun at his chest, but his wrists were weak and his fingers were trembling. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face and dripped down his chest. His shoulders were shaking, his knees about to buckle. And his eyes. Jounouchi had seen that look in Kaiba’s eyes before, and the effect was as potent—as enrapturing and repulsive—as ever.

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” he spat.

“And done what instead? Left Mokuba there in that house he hates with no idea where you’d gone or whether you’re alive or dead? That was real responsible of you, you know?”

Kaiba staggered a few steps back and rubbed his temples. “Mokuba…” he groaned, shaking his head. “Of course…” He dragged his fingers across his face and sighed, wincing slightly. He fumbled in the folds of his coat for a pen and small pad of paper. “Take him here.” He handed Jounouchi a hastily scrawled address and turned away in disgust. “Please.”

“Thanks for taking me home, Jounouchi.” Mokuba’s steps were slow and heavy on the stairs, his eyes and voice bleak. “I’m sorry things got so…weird.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Jounouchi tried to sound cheerful enough for both of them. ‘You…actually _live here_?”

They were standing near the center of the Domino suburbs, not far from where Seto had accosted Jounouchi with his gun. But despite the clamor of the streets and intersections that surrounded them, the building they entered encircled them in the soft and gentle arms of warm unadulterated silence. The walls looked as thin as cardboard, the carpeting in the lobby and on the stairs was wearing thin, but stepping over the threshold felt to Jounouchi like entering a fortress—a bastion against the all the hard, dirty creatures that hid between the cracks in the sidewalks and lurked under everyone’s shoes.

Jounouchi didn’t notice that he was following Mokuba up the stairs, and Mokuba—absorbed in his gray and rocky  thoughts—did not notice that he had been followed until he reached the front door.

It was here that the first indication that something more spectacular than a balding middle-aged salary man or bug-eyed hikikomori lurked behind the apartment door manifested itself—a small silver panel and intercom placed where the doorbell should have been.

“Seto’s kind of a freak about security,” Mokuba explained as he activated the panel, revealing a small computer screen buzzing with figures that Jounouchi couldn’t read. “The standard is like…a retina or finger scan or something, but he wouldn’t have that. He was afraid that someone might incapacitate one of us and gouge out our eyes or something.” Mokuba punched a few figures into the panel, then sighed and turned it off, flicking on the intercom instead. “Nii-sama,” he spoke softly, “can you come let me in?”

“Is there a problem with the door?” Kaiba’s voice sounded, if possible, gruffer over the metallic static of the intercom than in person.

“No.”

After a few moments they heard the muffle of footsteps and the unfurling of an elaborate configuration of deadbolts and padlocks.

Mokuba blew past his brother without speaking, pausing only to take off his shoes before burrowing deep into the heart of the apartment. Kaiba frowned as he heard the door to their bedroom slam.

Jounouchi tried to look anywhere but Kaiba’s face.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, uh, no problem! Anything to help out Mokuba here. Wait, your—” Kaiba had been about to close the door on him when impulse propelled Jounouchi’s hand forward, gently grazing the charred and swollen skin of Kaiba’s knuckles. “Your hands?”

“It’s fine,” he replied stiffly, still attempting to shut the door.

“No way! That looks awful. You should…see a doctor or something. Or at least put something on it.”

Kaiba snatched his injured hand against his chest. “I don’t have anything. It’s nothing. Go away.”

“Psh.” Jounouchi shouldered his way through the doorway, ignoring Kaiba’s indignant protests. “Lucky for you, I always come prepared. Where’s your kitchen? C’mon.”

“You are not welcome here,” Kaiba seethed from the threshold. “Leave. Now.”

Jounouchi shrugged off his demands. “In a minute. Trust me: if you get an infection you’re going to regret it.” He washed his hands and rifled through the drawers next to the kitchen sink, eventually finding a tea towel and running it under cold water. “Come over here.”

Kaiba was still standing in the doorway looking pale and mortally disgraced, so Jounouchi rolled his eyes and sauntered back in his direction. “Such a drama queen,” he murmured.

“I am not,” Kaiba fumed.

“Oh, yeah? Then give me your hand.”

Kaiba’s lips twisted. “And how am I supposed to trust that you know what you’re doing?”

“I’ve done this kind of stuff tons of times before. C’mon, stop being such a baby.”

Kaiba grimaced and sighed sourly, but gingerly extended his hands in Jounouchi’s general direction. “Just be quick about it.”

“Yes, your highness,” Jounouchi muttered, eliciting a small smirk from Kaiba.

Once their words ceased everything else suddenly should out in sharp relief. Jounouchi was suddenly aware of the soft, feathery, slightly stuffy air in the apartment—the way it was sweet and sticky like boiling rice. The comforting closeness of the walls. The simple and slightly scruffy furniture. Every sound felt muted and far away. Every sensation was gently blurred and tempered—except for the feeling of Seto’s warm, welted palm between his fingers, the lighting-sharp tremors the shot through his arm when he prodded the skin a little too roughly, the force of his scrutiny—so cold and intense that Jounouchi wondered whether he hadn’t really been shot after all.

“Huh, and all these years I thought that you were incapable of feeling pain,” Jounouchi mused. He fumbled in his pocket, extracting a tube of first-aid ointment and a roll of white cotton. Seto’s brow raised.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Huh?”

“I know your little friends are probably all blustering with curiosity. I’m not going to answer any of your questions.”

“That’s fine.” Jounouchi had been careful to avoid making eye contact, but the sorrowful sternness in Kaiba’s voice caused him to lose his resolve. And there was that look again—now rendered all the more powerful by their closeness, the contact of their skin, and the fact that Kaiba’s eyes were grotesquely magnified.

Jounouchi failed to stifle his laughter. “What is _that_?” He asked, pointing towards the bridge of Kaiba’s nose.

“My face, idiot.”

Jounouchi laughed. “No—what’s that _on_ it. You look insane.”

“I have hyperopia,” Seto replied flatly. “It’s really not that hilarious.”

“You look like an insect,” Jounouchi snickered. “I can see why you go with the contacts.”

Jounouchi started as Seto savagely pulled his hands away, ignoring the fact that Jounouchi was still tying the bandages. “You can leave now,” he snapped.

Jounouchi gave him a mock bow. “Of course, sir ,” he drawled, doing a poor job of stomping out his laughter. “You’re welcome, too.”

“Whatever,” Kaiba sneered, gesturing Jounouchi towards the door.

By the time Jounouchi’s eyes met Kaiba’s again, his expression had changed dramatically—his eyes as cold and closed as the door that slammed in Jounouchi’s face a few moments later.

“Did everything go okay?” Yuugi whispered.

Jounouchi had just stumbled into his bedroom, guided to his futon at the foot of Yuugi’s bed by the vague smears of street light that clung to the walls and carpet.

“Eh, could have been worse—all things considered. They’re both safe, at least.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Yuugi sighed and leaned back against his pillows, trying to take full advantage of the thin icy breeze offered by the air conditioner. “What do you think happened back there?”

“No idea. He wouldn’t tell me.”

Yuugi nodded. “Jou-kun—”

“What is it?”

“Do you miss him—Atem?” His voice was small and soft. “We used to stay up like talking all the time on nights like this—it feels weird for it to be so quiet.” His voice began to tremble slightly. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll forget him, and then it will be like he never existed at all…”

“Don’t talk that way!” Jounouchi exclaimed. “Of course I miss him, we all do. But he’s not completely gone, though. Not really…”

Yuugi nodded. “I know he said that he would always be in my heart.” He sighed. “But what if my heart changes? What if…someday there isn’t room for him anymore?”

“Then you make room, Yugi.”

For a few minutes they listened to the rumble of the fan, exploring the slopes and hillsides of their own thoughts.

“Doesn’t it just feel like—” Yuugi bit down on his words, realizing that his thoughts had not caught up with his mouth. “Like we were all on a planet together—we might have all been looking in different directions and been in different locations, but ultimately we were all going the same way. And now we’re kind of—floating—” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s okay, I think I know what you’re talking about.” He paused. The air had suddenly become warmer, thicker, and heavy with trepidation. His thoughts were too large for his own head—too close and too solid to exist solely in his heart. His pulse quickened and he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of every tremor and shift in his voice as he spoke. “Hey, Yuugi—you like Kaiba?”

The question did not strike Yuugi with the same brutal force that it did Jounouchi. “Yeah, of course.”

“No, I mean—” he sighed. “Never mind.”

“ _Jou-kun_ …” Yuugi was sitting up in bed now, eyes larger and filled with more stars than the light-polluted sky above them. He smiled. One of those smiles they exchanged when they stumbled upon one of his dad’s old magazines and snuck off to pour over the tantalizing, tawdry, beautiful photos on the roof during lunch as they licked the grease off their fingers.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Jounouchi exclaimed as he tossed his pillow in the direction of Yuugi’s face, forgetting for a moment that Shizuka was asleep in the next room. “It’s not like that.”

“Of course,” Yuugi leaned back in bed, still smirking. “What is it like, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you in love with him?” He giggled.

“No! Why would you even _suggest_ that? Well…I don’t think so. How—how can you tell?”

Yuugi shrugged. “I think it’s different for every situation. It feels different each time, with each person.”

Jounouchi nodded, chewing on his bottom lip.

He had seen many different colors of love. There was the glittery, artificial glow of love in the movies and on tv—more brilliant than anything that could weather the weight of reality. He had watched Yuugi fall in love with Anzu—a soft, warm, peachy hue the color of a summer sunrise that promised a day full of life and possibility. He had watched Yuugi fall in love with the spirit inside himself—a different kind of love, he supposed, but deep and rich in its own right. The love between them had been a lower, darker shade, something he had to squint closely at to distinguish from black, but as warm and solid as smoldering coals. He wanted to ask, wanted to know, what it felt like to let the ground dissolve under your feet, to let your love color the world, knowing that nothing would ever again look quite the same—not quite the way it was intended to look—but infinitely more beautiful.

He imagined that was what falling in love felt like.

That was not how it had it felt to him.

Jounouchi still had not grown accustomed to the dry air of California. Even surrounded by sea, the air seemed thin, rough, and empty—especially at night when the winds picked up. And all the dirt. And dark. Pegasus’ island, he had decided, had to be the darkest place he had been since the womb. And at least in the womb there hadn’t been anyone hiding in the shadows waiting to rob him of his star chips.

The darkness did offer some nice advantages, though. Jounouchi had been gathering firewood for half an hour, and had spent nearly half that time gazing up at the lush milky carpet of stars. He had never realized that his sky was so bare—that there was so much more to be seen, so many more stories to be told. He was soaring through the world of Achilles and Orion, swimming in a heavenly cityscape of gold and silver.

He didn’t notice that he had been followed until he was slammed chest first into a tree.

“Where is he?!” A cold, savage voice heaved down the back of his neck. The barrel of a gun was shoved under his chin, pointing directly into his skull.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about I just—”

“Where is he?!” He was shoved again, though with slightly less force than before.

“I don’t know who you’re talking—”

“Bullshit! Mokuba! Kaiba Mokuba! I know your boss has him. Take me there. Now! Or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!”

Jounouchi began to struggle against his captor in earnest. “Whoa, man! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t work for Pegasus!”

Jounouchi was surprised, and somewhat disappointed, by how easy it was to free himself from the intruder’s grasp. He had certainly been caught off guard, but once the initial shock wore off, the grip that clenched him was remarkably light, the body that wielded it thin, frail, and timorous. It didn’t take him much effort to send the man spiraling towards the ground.

“Hah! That’ll show you for sneaking up on me,” he announced as he turned to face his assailant, whom he had rendered a crumpled, dark, heaving mess on the ground. “Wanna face me like a man, punk?”

“I can imagine no greater indignity,” the creature muttered as it staggered to its feet, supporting the majority of its weight on low-hanging branches.

“Big words coming from a guy who can barely stand.”

“I can stand, idiot,” the voice groaned between labored breaths.

A wave of nausea suddenly struck him. He knew the owner of that voice. There was only one person he knew who could be so repulsively proud while rendered so utterly helpless.

“Kaiba..?” He asked, not sure if he should take a tentative step forward or go sprinting in the opposite direction. “But you—you’re supposed to be dead!”

“I’m aware.”

Once Jounouchi knew what he was supposed to see, the dark and indistinct shapes of his anonymous assailant resolved easily into the thin, flailing limbs of Seto Kaiba.

Kaiba looked like he had just crawled out of the jaws of death. His arms and legs trembled violently, his chest fluttered and his breath was ragged, thick, and sour. His cheeks were hollowed, skin wan and coated in a thick film of sweat. His scalp, once wreathed in hair that Jounouchi had thought a particularly ridiculous shade of brilliant lime green, now reflected the blistering rays of the moon and the gentle sparkle of the stars. He seemed to be swimming in his own clothes. A hospital tag dangled from his wrist.

The gun was still pointed at Jounouchi’s chest, directly at his blustering heart.

Kaiba stumbled forward, inhaling sharply with every step. “ _You_.” He seethed as he squinted into Jounouchi’s face. “Of course, it had to be you, make-inu,” he growled.

“Hey, I’m not too excited to see you, either!” Jounouchi retorted. “You’re lucky I don’t make those things they printed about you in the papers come true.”

Kaiba scoffed. “Why don’t you, then?”

It was then that Jounouchi saw his eyes. The eyes that were holding his body together through sheer force of will. The eyes that would not close and would not rest until they met Mokuba’s again. The eyes that had laughed through Armageddon but cried at the abrupt ending of a beautiful dream.

With every word and every gesture Kaiba shoved Jounouchi away, but his eyes seemed to plead for something that their owner could not articulate and refused to acknowledge In his eyes Jounouchi saw the one expression that he never would have imagined Kaiba capable of possessing.

Fear, all-encompassing and absolute. The fear that had drowned Jounouchi’s heart the day Shizuka moved away, the day his father had bolted the shudders and decided to drink his own darkness, the first day he woke up in the hospital.

The realization flooded Jounouchi with a feeling that was too bitter to be love, too soft to be hate, and too cold to be desire. But the three fleeting, almost half feelings, cobbled out of themselves something that was somehow all three and nothing at all.

 “Jou-kun! Is everything alright? We heard yelling.” Yuugi, Anzu, and Bakura rushed into the clearing, eyes wide with fear.

“I told you we shouldn’t have split up. It’s way too dangerous to be wandering around here alone.”

“Guys, relax—I’m fine.” Jounouchi tried to chuckle but struggled to find his voice.

“What happened—“ Yuugi took a step forward and froze. “Kaiba…?” His voice trembled but his face flooded with relief, and for a moment it looked that Yuugi might rush forward to embrace him. “You’re alive!”

“It would appear so.”

“Oh—Oh that’s so good!” He effused, chest rising in the triumph of absolution.

“Don’t get carried away,” Jounouchi grumpled. “He’s the same murderous asshole as always.”

“I have your deck.” Yuugi fumbled in his pocket and approached Kaiba tentatively, as if afraid that he would dissolve into pixelated dust like one of his digitally-rendered duel monsters. “I guess I have you to thank for helping me out in that duel back there.”

“It was trivial,” Kaiba grunted, struggling to keep his fingers from trembling as he slipped his deck back into his pocket. “I’ll be expecting a call from your lawyer.”

“Huh? Why? I don’t think I have one…”

“I imagine you want to seek restitution for the damages suffered by you and your,” he gestured towards Jounouchi, Anzu, and Bakura, “ _friends_.”

“I don’t care about those things, Kaiba-kun. I’m just glad to see that you’re alive!” Yuugi ignored Jounouchi’s irritated grunt and Anzu’s indignant glare as he continued. “You’re heading towards Pegasus’ castle too, right? You should stay with us! Though you’ll need some star chips, of course…”

Kaiba scoffed and bristled. “I’m not interested in competing in your little tournament. And I’m not going to waste my time dueling a bunch of amateurs before I get to Pegasus. Have fun with your games.”

“That’s not fair!” Anzu protested as he turned to leave. “This is about more than a game for Yuugi and Jounouchi, too. You’re not the only one who thinks that they have something worth fighting for. And—and Yuugi has been a mess of grief—”

“Yuugi’s emotions are not my responsibility.”

“You let him go for weeks thinking that he had killed you!”

“He did.” Jounouchi was the only one close enough to Kaiba to see how he swayed slightly as he spoke. He wondered how much it would take to knock him over. “You think your reasons for fighting matter? That the honor of your cause compels your victory?” He sneered. “Allow me to _enlighten_ you: Good intentions are worth nothing if you don’t have the talent to actualize them. Victory isn’t awarded according to who can garner the most _sympathy_.

And if you expect any part of this tournament to be fair then you don’t know Pegasus at all. He’s not just an expert at duel monsters, he created it. He designed the entire system and he engineered it to give himself every possible advantage. He shows no remorse, no mercy, and he certainly isn’t _fair_. Clinging to those pitiful illusions will only hold you back.”

Kaiba’s voice had regained its strength, but his eyes were wide, and even burrowed in his pockets his hands were visibly shaking.

“Just give it a rest, rich-boy,” Jounouchi snapped. “You’re clearly not in a position to go wandering around the woods by yourself in the middle of the night, so just swallow your pride for the night and we’ll help you find your brother in the morning.”

Kaiba’s face turned—if possible—a shade paler. He rounded on Jounouchi sharply, nearly stumbling over his feet and collapsing against him in the process. “I don’t recall asking for your advice, make-inu,” he hissed, then laughed—a low, velvety ruffle that made Jounouchi’s ears burn. “Don’t tell me that _you’re_ a competitor in this tournament. Well, Pegasus may be the expert on duel monsters, but clearly his ability to identify talented duelists leaves much to be desired. I can’t believe he would be so desperate for participants that he would stoop to inviting the most pathetic creature on the face of the planet.”

Jounouchi snarled. “Oh yeah? You wanna face me and see for yourself how pathetic I am?”

Kaiba smirked as much as he could under his grimace. “I’d love to, but it’s unnecessary. Your worthlessness is written all over your face.”

Jounouchi rushed at him, though whether it was to embrace or destroy him he couldn’t be sure. Kaiba barely managed to step out his path, causing Jounouchi to go sprawling across the forest floor. The last glimpse Jounouchi had caught of him, he had been smirking down on him, leaning heavily against a tree, his veneer of smugness doing a poor job of concealing the mounting anxiety that cast his features in a sharp, grisly radiance.

“You’re pathetic,” someone had said. He wasn’t sure who.

Over time, the wretched embarrassment of the memory had faded, but the confluence of emotions it had created in him remained. From the inky forests of Duelist Kingdom to the sprawling desert sands of ancient Egypt, those feelings had ridden with him like a parasite, lurking just underneath the surface of his skin, never fully existing but never going away. He had taken them out occasionally, when there had been a quiet moment in between battles, as stealthily as if he were a thief rifling through the contents of his own mind. He replayed the scene with the same sweet, shameful pleasure with which he tried to sneak peeks under the girls’ skirts at school or on the bus, the same ravenous hunger that inundated him when he poured over car catalogs and restaurant menus, the same tender pain that pierced him when he looked at his sister’s photograph.

That had been the state of things until their final day in Egypt, when Jounouchi had seen that look again. For the first time since their arrival the sky had been clear. The world felt blazing and painfully bright, as if it had been stripped of all its shadows.

Kaiba’s countenance had been stern and stoic, but as they watched the coronation of his namesake, his eyes burned with a defiant, hollow helplessness that pulled a trigger in Jounouchi’s heart. The wall he had built around his artless, undeveloped feelings began to crumble—freeing them to chase each other around the inside of his skull. What had once been a trickle was suddenly a tsunami, bearing down upon and preparing to destroy him with the force of a single, mesmerizing, abhorrent thought: the only thing that now stood between him and the object of this desire was its own infuriating stubbornness and sense of agency.


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning, both Seto and Jounouchi were thrust into a brutal wakefulness by one of the most unwelcome phone calls that they could imagine.

Seto’s began with an explosion. Just as the sun was beginning to bleach the morning sky, a pipe cracked, a valve burst, and the Domino City News landed on their headline story for—what they hoped—would be the next several weeks.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Seto seethed into his phone and prowled around the kitchen, careful not to wake Mokuba in the next room.

“I’m afraid not, sir,” Isono replied mournfully. “I think it’s best you come down right away. The news crews are already converging—waiting for your appearance.”

“Alright. Fine,” he sighed, leaning against the counter and rubbing his eyes. “I’ll figure this out.”

He raced dawn to the outskirts of town, to where the foggy slumber of Gozaburo’s old factories had been rudely ruptured. The buildings were all awake and restless now—the aggressive, thundering throb of the waves hurtling against the shore setting the anxious, unsettled beat of their heart. A crew of journalists jostled around the perimeter of the compound, cameras pressed tight against the bright orange safety barrier that had been erected.

Seto shouldered through the crowd, dodging the flashing bulbs and microphones that were shoved into his face, eager to catch one misplaced word or miscalculated expression. Seto was careful to remain stony and silent until reaching Isono, who was standing past the safety barricade.

“What happened?” he barked, voice gruff but not daring to rise above a whisper.

“It appears, sir, that a crack formed in one of the gas pipes leading to the former employee dormitories last night. There was a small explosion.”

“So? What’s the big deal?”

“Those pipes should not have been active. The dormitories have not been occupied since you closed this facility three years ago.” He sighed. “Furthermore, the incident has drawn attention to the fact that the environmental remediation efforts at this site were never, um,” a pang of nervousness stole through this voice, “completed. Or initiated. The soil is very heavily contaminated with radioactive material.”

Seto pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I suppose the city isn’t willing to just add that to my tab, are they?” He laughed—a sound as cold and jarring as the salty, rotten-smelling wind that whipped across their faces.

“I’m afraid not.” Isono replied. “Certainly not after last summer.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I’ve called the hazmat agency and site inspectors. They should be arriving shortly. In the meantime--I believe they are waiting for you to make a statement, sir.”

“I know, I know.” Seto sighed and glared over his shoulder at the undulating mob. “There wasn’t any way this could have taken care of this a bit more… _quietly_?”

Isono gave him a knowing look. “With all due respect, sir, I did not believe that was in your nature.”

Seto scowled. “That is what the evidence would suggest.”

-xxx-

“I don’t understand how he even got your number, or how he knew I was here…” Jounouchi groaned as he hunched over Yuugi’s kitchen table, still trying to rub the fog of sleep from his eyes.

“Well, our number is in the phone book.”

“But how did he know I was here! It’s just so—ugh!” He let his head drop to the table and spoke to the floor. “What do I do?”

“Do you think there’s a chance he’s just making empty threats? I mean, that’s a difficult claim to prove. He doesn’t really have any evidence, does he?”

“He doesn’t need to have any! Just make a couple phone calls and they’ll start an investigation. And I don’t have any evidence to prove that he’s wrong—well, he’s not wrong. That’s the whole problem.”

Yuugi bit his lip and placed a hand on Jounouchi’s trembling shoulder. “I wish there was something I could do. I bet if we and Anzu pooled our money—“

“Thanks, Yuugi.” Jounouchi interjected. “But I can’t do that to you. And it’s more than the money that’s the problem. This is something that’s going to keep coming to get me again and again.” He sighed and laughed bitterly. “I mean, how did I imagine I’d ever get a real job, or—what if I had ever been arrested! It would have been all over for me. And Shizuka.” An angry edge rose in his voice. “And it could still be.”

“There must be something you can do! Get a lawyer or something—you’re being blackmailed!”

Jounouchi shook his head. “Yeah, I’d like to see how that would play out—I doubt they treat the kids of illegal immigrants with too much sympathy, blackmailed or not. There’s nothing else to do—I have to go meet with him. I guess I should have seen it coming—jerk probably thinks I have a lot of money left over from duelist kingdom or something. Well, someone’s going to be pretty disappointed.”

Yuugi frowned. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. He sounds dangerous.”

“Of course it’s a not a very good idea!” Jounouchi shouted, standing suddenly and sending the barstool hurtling to the ground. His voice grew dark and rough, his face brutal. “But every choice is dangerous here. I can’t afford to believe that he’s just making empty threats.”

Yuugi’s lips drew into a thin, pale line. He closed his eyes and nodded several times, and when he reopened them he started slightly—as if surprised to still be standing there.

“At least let me come with you.”

“No way! It’s too dangerous! I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you because of me.”

Yuugi smiled, his eyes teasing. “You really think that excuse is going to work on me? We’re in this together—forever.”

-xxx-

“Funny, I snuck out of here just like this so many times before, never really thought I’d ever have to sneak back in.” Jounouchi spoke with effort, struggling to keep his flashlight clenched between his teeth. The two were squinting in the first tepid glimmers of dawn, pressed tightly between the briny claws of the rolling ocean and the crumbling concrete wall that formed the perimeter of what had once been the largest privately-owned nuclear warheads manufacturer in the world.

“That must have been terrifying,” Yuugi stammered, fervently repeating to himself that—no matter what might happen—he shouldn’t look down.

“Eh, once you get used to it it’s not that bad. Though—” the small rock ledge that had been serving as his handhold suddenly deteriorated in his grip and went tumbling—in pieces—into the sea. “It has been a while since I did this.”

The two were so focused on their mission—so inundated with the roll and thrust of the waves that broke over their shoulders—that they did not feel the rumble of the explosion that shook the ground, did not hear the shriek of the sirens, did not see the mob of reporters and emergency workers that bruised the periphery of the compound. They slipped through a gap in the barbed wire fence and melted into the shadows.

-xxx-

“And, what _exactly_ , Mr. Kaiba, have your company’s priorities shifted _to_ since your, hm, _ascendance_?”

“Why don’t you ask anyone on the face of the planet? Even the biggest, most technologically obtuse idiot could tell you that Kaiba Corp sets the standards in the gaming industry.”

An incredulous chuckle. “And what a set of standards they are. A tournament that hospitalized several of its participants; that turned the city of Domino into a bastion of international crime lords and delinquent punks for months, resulting in tens of millions of yen in property damage, a 70% increase in violent crime (which—a year later—has yet to return to pre-Battle City levels), and a severe overtaxing of all of Domino’s municipal services that has put the city an additional eight million yen in debt. Massive unemployment following the abrupt closure of this very factory, which resulted in a shocking 45% increase in poverty levels among Domino residents. Appalling levels of negligence with respect to proper environmental remediation techniques and building practices; it’s true—is it not, Mr. Kaiba—that you _personally_ demolished the former Kaiba Tower without conducting any environmental impact reports, obtaining government clearance, or even _notifying your employees_ who were working in the building a mere ten minutes before the explosion took place?

“You have created a Kaiba Corp that takes pride in its willful obliviousness, reckless abandon, and total disregard for its influence in the broader community—a Kaiba Corp obtained from your father under conditions which can be termed _dubious_ at best, that exists for the sole purpose of pursuing a personal vendetta against an upstart collectible card game player (a vendetta which, it should be noted, has yet to bear fruit), whose inaugural project was a what can only be called _psychopathic_ theme park that sent several to the hospital within the first day of its opening (it did, after all, only remain open for one day).

“The only standards you have set are those of negligent capriciousness, the only precedent you have established is that of uninhibited egoism, depravity, and annihilation. You may have wiped the world of Kaiba Corp’s weapons manufacturing plants, but your company is as much in the war business as it ever was—and you can hardly call that progress.”

“I’m sorry—can you repeat the question? Or did you just come here to tell me what I _already know_?”

-xxx-

The voices still rung and rattled in Kaiba’s ears. They swirled and became foggy and thick in his mind, until he was no longer sure which words the reporters had leveled against him and which had been his own.

He wiped his forehead and tried to prevent his vision from swimming out of focus, tried to listen to the team of remediation experts and engineers who were guiding him around the facility. They bobbed and floated in the air before him, occasionally gesturing towards one of their bulky, buzzing instruments or pointing out a particularly heinous example of infrastructure collapse. They didn’t have faces, Seto noted with detached curiosity.

“—background levels of radiation at this site are eight times higher than industry standard—“

“—dangerously high concentrations of acetaldehyde, PCB, hexachlorophene—“

“—walls and ceilings in the employee dormitories lined with asbestos—“

“—your company is as much in the war business as it ever was—“

“—it is only after you have learned to relinquish the darkness inside your heart that you will be able to achieve a _true victory_ —“

“—Have you ever wondered how much easier and more pleasant life could be if we learned to simply _stop caring_ —“

“—this is your destiny, Seto. Don’t turn your back on your greatest achievements—“

“—I’m afraid I may have to bequeath to you a large and profound responsibility—“

“—and you can hardly call that _progress_ —“

“Shut up!”

“Sir?”

Everyone had faces now, and they were gawking at him with unabashed curiosity.

“I’m fine.” Seto waved away Isono’s concerned expression. “It’s just…stuffy in here. I’m going outside.”

The morning was still young, but the air had already settled into a thick and sticky blanket that clung, unrelenting, to every surface. The mist from the sea stuck to his hair and formed a salty film on his skin, making his damp layers of clothing feel coarse and oppressive. He grimaced and clawed at the collar of his trench coat, but didn’t think to take it off.

He drifted away from the choppy chatter of the builders, from Isono’s stern and ceremonial sympathy, from the insatiable flocks of the news crews—still wafting around the perimeter of the facility. With every footstep the he sank deeper into the soggy ground, the walls dug deeper into his skin, the angry echoes reverberating off every cold, crumbling surface became louder, colder, completely unremitting. The deeper he ventured into the compound, the more each surface seemed to resonate with a tense, dark anger that squeezed out his breath and made his blood run black.

He scraped his fingernails down the grimy walls, feeling a glimmer of childish pride at the small patch he was able to clear of moss and slime, the small stabs of pain that shot through the tips of his fingers, the small patch of life that he was able to destroy.

“What a shithole,” he muttered under his breath, erupting in shrill laughter as he flicked the filth under his fingernails into the ocean. “I should have done this _a long time ago_.” He turned to the piles of rumble that surrounded him—crumbled concrete, moldy cardboard and soiled Styrofoam—with a dark and seething intensity. His lips curled into a cruel smirk. “But I suppose, if the proper remedial actions are taken immediately, some small part of my investment may still be salvageable.”

-xxx-

Jounouchi grimaced at Yuugi’s concerned glances, and continued pacing.

“Stop looking at me like that—you’re making me nervous!”

Yuugi sighed. “I’m sorry, Jou-kun. I suppose I am nervous. I wish there was more I could do to help you.” His eyes brightened. “Maybe we could duel him!”

Jounouchi laughed but shook his head. “I know that’s your strategy with most people, but he’s not that type. Doesn’t play Duel Monsters. Cares more about money than honor.”

Yuugi bit his lip. “Are you sure? I mean, that usually works.”

“You can’t duel the whole country. Some things are just too big to solve with Duel Monsters.”

Yuugi launched himself from his chair. “But it’s not fair! It’s not your fault that the law’s so stupid! You don’t deserve to spend your whole life hiding! There must be something we can do—someone who can understand and, and help us!”

They heard a crash directly outside the door, followed by the sound of charred, disparaging laughter.

“Is that him?” Yuugi whispered, instinctively stepping towards the doorway.

“It has to be.” Jounouchi placed a hand around Yuugi’s shoulder. “Let me.”

“We do this together,” Yuugi replied, his face betraying the remnants of Atem’s stubborn fearlessness.

Jounouchi nodded and fixed his face into the sternest expression he could muster. They opened the door together, resisting the temptation to shield their eyes from the sudden onslaught of light.

“Kaiba-kun? He’s the friend of your father that’s blackmailing you?”

“Huh? No!”

“Kaiba-kun…?” Yuugi began again and approached him cautiously. “What are you doing?”

“Expunging the filth from the earth!” Kaiba announced triumphantly as he hurled another armful of rubble into the ocean.

“Oh…okay…” Yuugi continued creeping closer, a painfully concerned expression etched into his face. “You know, it’s still on earth if it’s in the ocean. It’s just underwater but it’s still there…”

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Kaiba shot back.

“It looks like you’re playing with garbage.”

“I definitely did not ask for yours!” He snarled, then started abruptly. The diabolical gleam disappeared from his eyes, and he seemed to notice them for the first time. “What are you two doing? No one’s supposed to be here.”

“Um…”

“Just hanging out.” Jounouchi leaned against the nearest wall in an attempt to project an air of nonchalance.

“Bullshit. No one’s allowed on these grounds. This whole area is quarantined.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me this involves some half-baked scheme to save the world again. I’ve had quite enough of that.”

“No, well, you see—”

“I can be here whenever I want.” Jounouchi’s voice rippled with indignation. “I live here.”

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “You live at an abandoned toxic waste site? Why am I not surprised.” He paused. “I suppose, then, that you’re the one who has been using the gas?” His voice dripped with weary exasperation.

“ _Lived_ ,” Yuugi corrected him.

“You realize that’s incredibly dangerous, right? And illegal.”

“That’s none of your business,” Jounouchi growled, pawing the ground.

“Oh really. As the owner of this property I believe it is—by definition—my business. Now get out.”

“We can’t.”

Kaiba stared at Yuugi incredulously. “And why is that?”

“Well…”

“We’re meeting someone here.” Jounouchi struggled to keep his voice from shaking.

“Well, I hate to break it you—but no one’s going to be meeting you here today. This whole compound has been sealed off. Get out.”

“But, we just _can’t_.” Jounouchi could feel his throat tightening. He couldn’t risk believing that Kaiba was right, couldn’t risk facing the danger that awaited him if he turned away.

“You _can’t_.” Kaiba laughed. “If you and your little friends want to get yourselves killed in your spare time I couldn’t care less, but try not to do it on my property.”

The two stammered and sputtered, but refused to leave.

“This is too important,” Yuugi declared. “Jou-kun’s whole future is in danger—we can’t just give up now and let things get any more out of control!”

Jounouchi grimaced. “Geez--it wouldn’t kill you to be a little discrete, would it?”

“Hm. Coming from anyone else I might consider taking that seriously, but Yuugi, you thought the fate of the world was at stake three weeks ago when you lost your bus pass.”

“It was _stolen_!”

“Whatever. The point is, it’s going to take a lot more than your cryptic hyperboles to move me. So either you two are going to come up with a legitimate reason for being here or—”

“It’s because I’m not Japanese.”

Yuugi and Seto turned to Jounouchi in shock. His foot pawed at some loose rubble, but his eyes and voice remained dark and steadfast.

“My dad snuck over here for work a couple years before I was born. My mom didn’t know when they met, and when she found out she left him—and took Shizuka with her.” He sighed, and it sounded like his soul was trying to escape out from between his teeth. “We’ve been lucky—to a point. One of my dad’s gambling buddies works at the hospital so he helped take care of everything whenever one of us—got sick—or something. But it turns out that my dad’s bad at gambling and even worse at choosing friends. Ever since I got back and found him in the hospital—” it was here that his voice began to waver—“Apparently my dad owes him money or something. A lot. And…and he’s threating to turn us in if he doesn’t get it back.” He began to shudder as he spoke. “And I promised Shizuka that I wouldn’t do anything irresponsible…but we could lose everything that we’ve worked so hard to get…just like that. I—I can’t just let that happen.”

He hadn’t noticed Kaiba’s approaching him as he spoke, and it wasn’t until he was close enough to see the dirt in Jounouchi’s pores that he noticed either.

“Let me help you.”

“Huh? Wha—”

“Don’t make me repeat myself. Do you want my help or not?”

“Well, I mean, um, how could you help me—and why?”

Kaiba shrugged. “Hacking into the department of immigration databases, forging naturalization documents—it’s trivial. But if you would rather see you and your little sister get kicked out of the country—”

“I didn’t say that! I just…didn’t think you would want to help me.”

“You have a problem; I have the resources to resolve it. I’m not giving you charity—I’m minimizing the potential energy of the system.”

“What makes you think it will be so easy?”

Kaiba hesitated a moment before replying. “I’ve done it before.”

-xxx-

Shizuka was still asleep when they stumbled back up the stairs at the back of the game shop.

“Why do I feel like I’m considering making a deal with the devil?”

Yuugi frowned. “Is that really how you feel? I don’t think it’s that bad of an idea…”

“It’s not a bad idea. I just—I just didn’t want things to turn out this way.”

“What do you mean?”

Jounouchi leaned against the wall of the upstairs landing. “Isn’t it just making new lies to cover the old ones? It’s like—two wrongs don’t make a right, you know?”

“I don’t know, Jou-kun…” Yuugi stole a glance over his shoulder, to where Shizuka’s serene, sleeping face was just discernable amidst a cloud of blankets. “I wish I could give a clear answer, but—” he shrugged, suddenly looking as if he hadn’t slept in years, “maybe sometimes there are no clear answers. I think you should do whatever your heart tells you is right.”

“Huh. Yeah, listen to the heart of the cards, right?”

Yuugi nodded, and his expression brightened. “Sure. Let’s ask your deck what to do.”

Yuugi went to his room to retrieve Jounouchi’s deck, but when he held it out to him, he didn’t accept it.

“It’s okay, Yuugi,” Jounouchi said, eyes fixed firmly on Shizuka. “I know what I have to do.”


	9. Chapter 9

Jounouchi pounded his fist against the glass door, making it quiver in its frame. “C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered. “Open up already.”

“Calm down, onii-chan,” Shizuka whispered, placing a hand on his arm. “You’ll break it.”

Jounouchi sighed and cast an anxious glance at the empty streets around them. Despite the fact that they had been invited here, he couldn’t shake the shadow of culpability that hung around his shoulders and wrapped itself around his neck. He shivered under the irate glare of the street lamps, barred his teeth at the sleek, impenetrable surfaces of the imposing office buildings that enclosed them, unable to rid himself of the feeling that he was intruding in a world that was both incapable of and completely unwilling to support him. He shot an irritated glance at the uppermost floor of the building, where a single golden light raged against the night sky.

“I just wish that he’d hurry up already,” he grumbled. “Instead of just leaving us out here for ages.” He shook his fist at the top of the building. “There are people waiting down here, y’know?!”

“I’m well aware,” Seto replied as he unlocked the door and ushered them in. “As is the entire neighborhood. You have a bad habit of making yourself far too conspicuous.”

“It’s about time!” Jounouchi seethed as he and Shizuka followed Kaiba into the lobby.

“You’re hardly in a position to be making complaints. Follow me.”

If the Kaiba mansion had exuded a suffocating air of lavish self-indulgence, Kaiba Corp headquarters countered with a steely wave of cold, merciless efficiency. Even with the desks left abandoned and the hallways eerily dark and silent, the building seemed to hiss with an exacting, carefully calculated prowess that was a fortress against wastage and weakness.

“We were just afraid that you might have forgotten,” Shizuka explained as the two caught up to Kaiba at the bank of elevators that lined the back wall of the lobby.

“Or that I was lying?”

Neither replied.

“I wasn’t lying,” Kaiba continued as he stepped into the elevator. “I wonder why you would even bother coming if you suspected it was a possibility. If I can’t be trusted to keep my word I certainly can’t be trusted to keep your secrets.”

“Well, you seem to be doing okay so far,” Jounouchi grumbled as he followed him into the elevator, taking care both to maximize the distance between them and create a physical barrier between Kaiba and his sister. “Just don’t blow it.”

Jounouchi fought a wave of vertigo as the elevator doors slid shut behind them and they began to glide into the sky.

-xxx-

“Three?” Kaiba’s eyes narrowed in distaste as Jounouchi set three worn manila folders on his desk. “I thought I was just dealing with the two of you.”

Shizuka and Jounouchi exchanged nervous glances. “We were hoping you could make some documents for our father as well,” Shizuka explained.

“Why.”

“He’s a member of our family. It would be shameful not to protect him when we have the chance.”

Kaiba shot her a stare almost as severe as that of the Blue Eyes White Dragon figurine perched on the edge of his desk. He shook his head. “You’re wasting your time and my effort.”

“This is more important.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes and Jounouchi smiled. Shizuka’s eyes were firm but her bottom lip was trembling.

“Your sentimentality is a massive liability,” he sighed. “But fine, whatever. It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Jounouchi flinched as Kaiba reached across the table. “What’s the problem, make-inu,” he asked as he began to leaf through the tattered documents. “You thought I’d be able to forge copies of your medical records without looking at them? Not even I’m _that_ good.”

Jounouchi shifted in his seat and crossed his arms. “No, I just don’t see why—”

“Do you really want any more people to be involved in this process than is strictly necessary? Do I have to remind you that there’s a reason we’re doing this at night—with no one else around?”

“It’s okay, Katsuya,” Shizuka curled a placating hand around his fist. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

Kaiba’s lip curled. “Hm. That’s debatable.” He turned to his computer monitor—washing his face in a jarring, ghostly glare—and pointedly ignored Jounouchi’s fuming expression. “Now—we may be nearing the end of the twentieth century, but the Japanese bureaucracy is still heroically clinging to Stone Age technology. Only a small fraction of the national archive has been digitized—for the most part it’s nothing but a hopeless mess of documents akin to what you have here. This means that hacking into the few digital databases that are available is embarrassingly simple—the government doesn’t see the point in protecting something that barely exists. Unfortunately, it also means that this task can’t be completed remotely: someone has to infiltrate the relevant offices and physically replace the necessary documents.”

“I thought you said this would be easy.”

 “Creating the forgery is easy—fabricating the reality to support it is considerably more challenging. But not impossible.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and smirked. “Consider yourself lucky to know me.

“Assuming that you want to pass yourselves off as official Japanese citizens, you’ll need to have an entry in the koseki and an official address in the juminhyo. And no, that vacant Kaiba Corp facility cannot count as your official address. For the juminhyo we only have to work with the city of Domino; amending the koseki requires dealing with the Ministry of Health and Welfare—which is located in Tokyo. Once those documents are in place everything else should be relatively straightforward—though I imagine you want to have official medical and school registration records. I can make copies of those with the information you have provided me here,” he gestured towards the stack of papers on his desk, “though for obvious reasons I will not be handling the _assimilation_ of these documents personally.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Shizuka struggled to keep her voice from quavering.

“That’s not really my concern.”

“Oh come on, don’t give me that.” Jounouchi tried to laugh but the sound became charred in the back of his throat. “Look pretty boy, no one is forcing you to help us, so either you commit to the whole thing or don’t bother at all.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward in his chair, scrutinizing Kaiba carefully. “You can’t just make a half-assed commitment to start something then sit back all smug and pompous when we can’t finish it on our own when you’re perfectly capable of helping.”

Kaiba was sitting up straighter now, eyes glowing.

“Oh really.” Voice halfway between a cold rebuff and velvety purr.

“Yeah,” Jounouchi growled. “I won’t let you.”

“Hn. We’ll see about that. I don’t particularly appreciate being told what to do.”

Jounouchi smirked. “I’ve noticed. I guess that means it’s time for a change, doesn’t it?” He let the question linger in the air between them—a balmy, crimson whisper.

“Kaiba-san, your phone is ringing.”

Kaiba turned to her sharply. “I’m aware. It’s not important.” He stole a furtive glance at the phone to his side, the flashing red light that glared up at him with dazzling fury—like a fiery, solitary eye. Its lurid ring seemed to make the room ripple with infantile mockery.

He shook his head sharply, as if the sound was piercing him. A small tremor stole down his shoulders.

He stood abruptly. “Well, what are we waiting for.” He smoothed the creases in his pants, blinked several times, then sat down again and began flicking through the files in Jounouchi’s folder. The phone was still ringing, firing bullets into the silence.

“Kaiba-san, are you—“

“Fine,” he snapped, not looking up. “Hm. You’ve certainly led quite a reprehensible life, make-inu. Though to be honest I can’t claim to be surprised…”

Jounouchi bristled. “Laugh all you want, if that’s what it takes to make you feel special. Shizuka is right, I have no reason to be ashamed of my past. I mean sure, not all of us can grow up in fancy mansions like you, but I wouldn’t trade those struggles for anything—they’ve made me who I am today.”

Kaiba scoffed. “Did you read that in a greeting card.”

The night ticked on at what Jounouchi felt to be an infuriatingly slow pace. Shizuka bobbed in and out of wakefulness, her small fists always steadfastly clenched at her sides. Kaiba was absorbed in his work at the computer, his concentration only faltering occasionally to fill in gaps in the paperwork or shoot angry glares at his phone, which was erupting in caustic fury nearly every twenty minutes.

“Gee, Kaiba, looks like someone really wants to talk to you,” Jounouchi spoke over his shoulder. He had abandoned his post at Kaiba’s desk several hours previously and had taken to prowling the office, squinting at the many certificates and trophies that lined its walls. Even in the semi-darkness they emitted a kind of haughty luster that set his teeth on edge. “Think you’re going to pick up ever?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” He didn’t look away from his computer monitor.

“Well can you turn it off or something then? Shizuka is trying to sleep. We don’t need to keep hearing this.”

Kaiba grumbled, but pulled the cord out of the phone and slid it into the garbage.

“You aren’t even a little bit curious to find out who wants to talk to you so bad? I can’t imagine you get that many people crawling after your company.”

“Very funny.” He paused. “I know who it is. I have no desire to speak to him.”

“Well I’m sure you’re really hurting his feelings.”

“Hardly.” Kaiba watched him for a moment over steepled fingers. Jounouchi was like a wild gust of wind—disruptive, unabashed, and unsettling. Not nearly as tarnished as his criminal record and harrowing medical history would suggest. Somehow those things hadn’t clung to him.

Jounouchi bobbed on his feet. “Y’know, I have to admit that I’m impressed, Kaiba. You’ve got so many gaming trophies—chess, Go, Diplomacy…”

“Jealous that the only thing you could win is a competitive eating contest?”

“Ha. Yeah I could wipe the floor with you there. I mean what I said though—this is really something. I don’t know many guys who would build a shrine to their eternal virginity here in their office like this. That takes major guts.”

“How long did it take you to come up with that joke.”

“Not that long.” He yawned. “I’m getting tired though, so it’s probably not my best work.”

“Hn. Well I’m certainly grateful to have been spared the full force of your scathing wit.” He paused, and with slight trepidation, retrieved a thick, glossy envelope from its hiding place underneath a pile of paperwork. “Did you get one of these?”

“Huh?” Jounouchi stepped closer then plucked the envelope from Kaiba’s grasp, puzzling over the elaborate calligraphy of the address. “Maybe? I don’t really check the mail at Yuugi’s and I doubt anything addressed to home is getting there. What is it?”

Kaiba’s jaw tightened. “An invitation. To an Industrial Illusions gala a week from today.”

“Hm, I think I read about that in the papers actually.” Jounouchi turned the envelope over in his hands. “Pretty crazy I guess, I figured Pegasus was gone for good.”

“Apparently not.”

“So are you going to go?”

Kaiba seemed to be staring aggressively into the middle distance. “I can’t afford not to.” He ground his teeth. “I can’t keep throwing out telephones.”

“Huh?”

“He’s been calling me for three days. I have to throw the phone away when I run out of space on the answering machine.”

“Why do you not want to talk to him so badly?”

Kaiba stared at him incredulously. “He’s a washed-up fraud whose every creation is nothing but a manifestation of his own twisted depravity. And he’s still trying to pass himself off as a legitimate businessman.” He snatched the invitation out from between Jounouchi’s fingers. “It’s pathetic.”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Well, I mean I’m not going to go out of my way to defend the guy, but have you thought that maybe he’s—you know—changed? You’ve gotta remember that he had the Millennium Eye when he went off the rails—you know that must have messed with his mind.”

“Shoving a lump of gold into his eye socket isn’t a valid excuse for becoming a psychopath.”

“And losing a duel is?”

Kaiba smirked, somewhat bitterly. “No. I was a psychopath before that happened.”

“Psh.” Jounouchi sat down again, leaning back in his chair. “You know I’m only teasing you. I think you should give him a chance, though.”

“Hm. The day I start taking advice from you is the day I’m institutionalized.” Kaiba turned back to his computer. “I’m almost done.”

“Oh great! Hey, listen—” He paused, trying and failing to swallow the blustering nervousness in his throat. “Thanks. I hope you know that, well, if you ever need anything—”

“Don’t get carried away; it’s only paperwork. And besides,” he smirked—cold and toothy, “There’s nothing I would ever want from you. Except maybe to shut up every once in a while.”

“Ha ha. Well sorry to disappoint but I don’t think I’ll be able to deliver on that.” He stole a tender glance at Shizuka, who was curled up in her chair, stirring slightly. “To be honest, I wasn’t completely sure that I wanted to do this. But I’m doing it for her. She deserves so much more out of life than what were born into.” He took off his jacket and gently draped it across her shoulders. “Living in that dingy dorm room and dodging the cops—no wonder our mom took off with her. But, even though I knew it was better for her, I think it made me angry…because I wanted to save her myself. No matter what it took, what it will take, I always wanted to know that I could help…that I was worth something to her. Everything I’ve ever done to try to make myself better…it was for her, so I could be more for her.”

Kaiba coughed. “No wonder you’re such a lousy duelist—your brain’s too full of sentimental drivel for you to think clearly.” Delivered tepidly.

“I wouldn’t even be a duelist if it wasn’t for her. Not a real one, anyway. C’mon, don’t be stupid—I’ve seen you stick your neck out for Mokuba enough times to know that you understand what I’m talking about.”

“Whatever.”

Jounouchi sighed. “I don’t know what you think you’re gaining trying to convince the world that you don’t have feelings. No one worth caring about would judge you for it.” He paused. “Well, anyway, I may never be able to pay you back, so I just wanted you to know how much it means to me. It’s—a new beginning for us. It means we won’t have to pretend anymore.” Every gesture was soft, supple, warm—glowing with new and tender hope.

“Okay.”

“That reminds me,” he turned back to Kaiba, eyes large and gleaming, as if he were seeing him for the first time. “Why did you have to do this before?”

“Do what.”

“Make fake documents. You said you had done it before.”

Kaiba narrowed his eyes. “Why do you carry a first aid kit in your pocket.”

“Answer mine first.”

He sighed. “According the to the Kaiba Corporation charter, only a blood descendent of its founder is able to serve as president—which I, clearly, am not. That, in conjunction with the fact that Gozaburo was not particularly eager to advertise the fact that he was incapable of producing viable offspring, made our adoption a somewhat covert affair.” When Jounouchi looked confused, he continued. “There were no papers, no—evidence of our existence. While Gozaburo was alive it wasn’t much of an issue, but after his death—people started to ask questions.”

“And people didn’t ask questions when he rolled in one day with two kids who didn’t look anything like him?”

“It didn’t really work that way.” The grit and darkness in his voice gave Jounouchi the impression that he wouldn’t progress much further along that line of questioning.

“Oh, okay.” He shrugged. “Well, you should have figured out the first aid thing by now. I got in fights. I got injured—a lot. Eventually I had to learn how to start taking care of myself. It was either that or, I don’t know, never go outside. I had to learn prepare to get hurt and not be a baby about it.”

-xxx-

Jounouchi and Shizuka departed with a bundle of paperwork and instructions from Kaiba about how to get into contact with the Domino municipal government.

Once his office was empty, Seto draped himself across his desk, rubbing his eyes. Dawn was just beginning to stain the sky, and even after adjusting the air conditioning he could feel the heat building in the air outside.

He spent a moment examining his invitation, grimacing when he brought it close to his face and realized that it was lightly perfumed with something floral and offensive. On his computer, his recreation of the Jounouchi family tree was still open. He smiled to himself as he admired his handiwork—a few swipes along his keyboard and history had been rewritten. Somewhere the world’s balance of justice had shifted, however imperceptibly.

The light was just beginning to catch on his wall of accolades, on the scales of Blue Eyes figurine. He turned it to face him, and let a fingertip gently caress the surface of its forehead.

“So,” he asked, voice cautious, “how am I doing?”

No response. Frowning, Kaiba pushed the statue away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional notes  
> Koseki = the Japanese family registry. A record of all births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, etc. Entry into the koseki is seen as proof of citizenship.  
> Juminhyo = the local registry of addresses. Citizens can only qualify for some social services (such as health care and school registration) if they are recorded in the juminhyo. We can just pretend that the Domino school district is not very organized so Jounouchi still managed to get in without the proper paperwork.


	10. Chapter 10

The evening had rolled in balmy and thick—a lush, star-speckled blanket that respired against the glowing faces of the partygoers, floated in their sparkling wine and stained-glass cocktails, and wafted across the glossy surface of the pond—sending the lily pads and floating tealights swirling.

The bustling exhilaration of the showcase had long ago melted away and given way to a languid rhythm of schmoozing and small talk, accompanied by the few dusky, dappled notes of a distant jazz band. The men were beginning to unlace their ties, the women to strip off their heels as they drifted in pairs on the dewy lawn—slipping in and out of the shadows as effortlessly as breathing.

Mai scowled. The middle-aged businessmen types that made a habit of attending these events had a tendency to cling to her like moths to a flame once the sun had gone down, as if her shamelessly tawny hair and spitfire attitude were the panacea to their beige shoebox, fill-in-the-bubbles lives. And the alcohol only made it worse. Their mouths got loser and their grips tighter.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes, easing herself away from the crowd.

“Oi, Kajaku-chan!” Someone called after her. “Leaving the party so soon? We’re just getting started over here!”

She grit her teeth but raised the corners of her mouth. “Later, boys. Unlike you fellas, I have to work tomorrow.”

There was a burst of raucous laughter. “Going home all alone, that’s a shame…”

“You want someone to walk you home, Kajaku-chan?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Ah, don’t be like that, Kajaku-chan,” one of them jeered at her. “With an attitude like that you’ll end up an old maid before you know it! You won’t be young and beautiful forever, you know!”

They laughed amongst themselves, passing around another bottle of wine and tossing the ones they had finished into the bushes.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

She turned from them, ignoring the shrill laughter still ringing in her ears.

“Maybe if all these losers weren’t too wasted to think straight I might have a chance of having a good time here,” she muttered. “But put a couple swigs of alcohol in them all they see are tits and ass.” She snorted, crossing her arms across her chest. “Is there anyone here who’s actually worth talking to?”

-xxx-

Jounouchi could feel his heart throbbing in his throat. Suggesting this game had been a stupid idea—he could see that now. Because now the party was starting to melt into a warm river of soft misty light, but everyone at his table was sharp and still—their only movements a flicker of the eyes across the table or the contemptuous curl of a lip upon landing a particularly devastating blow.

Everyone, that was, expect Kaiba, who was continually scanning the patio, biting his lip, and flinching whenever Mokuba made any sudden movements. Jounouchi tapped on the table. “Yo, it’s your turn—are you even paying attention?”

Seto’s eyes snapped back across the table. He grimaced and sighed. “This is ridiculous.”

“Hey, you sit at our table, you play by our rules. Now go.”

Seto rubbed his temples. His head was throbbing. “And what a mistake that was.” He stole a glance at Mokuba, who smirked up at him mischievously.

“Just go, nii-sama,” he insisted. “Or I’ll come up with one for you…”

Seto bristled and tightened his grip on Mokuba’s wrist under the table. “Fine, whatever—I’ve—” he cast his gaze around the garden; Pegasus had yet to make an appearance. Yet his spirit seemed to lurk in every shadow, prying into him with the insolence of a thousand unblinking eyes. He tried to shake the feeling off, but his grip around Mokuba’s wrist and the tremor in his veins remained. “I’ve never lost a chess match.”

He leaned back in triumph as the rest of the table grumbled and Jounouchi, Yuugi, and Mokuba each put down one of their fingers. He raised a brow at Yuugi, “Even you, king of games?”

Yuugi shrugged. “When I was still learning…”

“Hn, typical.” Seto leaned into him, eyes bristling and black. “When did you last play.”

“Hey!” Jounouchi interjected, “It’s your turn, Mokuba! Give us a good one.”

“Hm...” Mokuba rested his chin on his free hand and bit his bottom lip. “I guess…okay! Never have I ever…had to go to the hospital.”

There was an uneasy shifting at his side and he could feel a flinch steal down Seto’s arm, slightly rattling his wrist. All three of his opponents retracted a finger. Yuugi smiled sheepishly, eyes darting between Seto’s stern frown, Jounouchi’s raised brows, and Mokuba’s wide eyes.

“Really, nii-sama? When?”

“A long time ago. It’s not important.”

Mokuba nodded, but the tumult painted across his face did not completely subside. ‘A long time ago’ was another of their codes, another string of meaningless symbols, a lie that felt dearer and rung with more poignancy than the truth when it reverberated between them. But tonight, with Seto’s face deliberately blank and his tone hollow and grey, Mokuba didn’t sense the bittersweet warmth of shared recognition, only a cold and empty pane of slate. A secret that Seto shared with only himself.

-xxx-

Isis tapped on the door, perhaps a bit more brusquely than was strictly necessary.

“Were you planning on staying squirreled away for the remainder of the evening?”

“And eternally disgrace myself as a host in the eyes of Domino’s most illustrious businessmen?” Isis shook her head. His voice was as airy and flippant as ever. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The door opened shortly after. “I’m afraid that attending to my appearance takes a touch longer than it used to—I can’t imagine that the natural look would go over well with our investors. Oh!” He smiled at Isis and dipped his head slightly in deference. “I apologize. _My_ investors. Heaven knows you’ve had more than enough of this business.”

Isis nodded but didn’t reply, fingers inadvertently flickering to the scarlet rose she had tucked behind her ear. She had removed and replaced it several times over the course of the evening, never quite satisfied with the warm ruby glow that illuminated her face when she wore it, nor the ashen severity that seemed to take over in its absence.  Pegasus watched her, and even with only one functional eye he saw more than Isis would have liked.

“I admit, though, I’m saddened to see you go.”

“I assure you it’s for the best.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that.” He drifted towards the window, gazing at the partygoers below—effervescent stars swimming in the infinite matrix of night. “But no one could capture the true magnificence of Duel Monsters like you could.”

“Was there ever any magnificence in it?”

His wistful smile snapped into a troubled frown. “Of course! A troubled and broken spirit reaching across time to seek communion, to share its life force and do battle against the combined forces of evil alongside one fragile human soul—what could be more achingly beautiful that that union between darkness and light—spirit and flesh—transcending all physical bounds?”

He sighed, and his face seemed to drop slightly. “I know I flew too close to the sun—I channeled that force to selfish ends, to appease my own fears and mend my own heart—and I had no right to infringe upon something so sacred. But…despite it all I can’t help but feel that there was something beautiful in that as well, as ugly as it was. Like a phoenix, I had to burn away everything bitter and rotten—before I could rise again.”

He leaned into the windowsill, chin resting in his palm, and smiled again. Dour thoughts had never clung to him for long. He chuckled softly.  “Fortunately my tastes are decidedly lighter now.” He turned to her, and there was a quiet and tender softness in his features that Isis had only seen in his earliest self-portraits, completed when the morning of his life had still been bright and crisp.

“You look quite lovely, Ms. Ishtar.”

Isis shifted and looked away. Her cheeks flushed with the memory of the half hour spent making last-minute alterations to the gown she had worn during Battle City and subsequently refused to touch or acknowledge. Now stripped of its golden adornments and sporting a more modest hemline, Isis was now impervious to the salty leers of Industrial Illusion’s less respectable associates—especially when coupled with her rigid and hostile glower. But she shivered without her veil, flinched without the comforting restraint of her belt and heavy bangles, and couldn’t help but cling to the fear that—tamed as the dress now was—she looked infinitely more ridiculous in it now than she had abroad the Kaiba Corp airship.

“Thank you.”

“You should keep the flower, it suits you.” He turned back to the window. “How do you think they’re doing down there?”

“They are waiting for you.”

 “Are they? I don’t believe so. Come, see if you can see what I can.” He pointed to one of the tables on the patio. Though the light was dim, Isis could distinguish a flare of bright blonde hair, a handful of fluorescent spikes, two figures who from above appeared almost as dark as the encroaching shadows—and were clinging to each other to preserve what little light they retained between them.

He sighed. “I’m afraid I’m just the man behind the curtain now. The cowardly lion discovered the courage lying dormant in his own heart, the scarecrow learned to ponder matters more cerebral than his corporal existence. And they have woken up to the fact that they simply do not need me, and that in fact they never truly did. In the end, the only person who could grant them what they were seeking was themselves. But,” his voice caught slightly, but he smoothed it over and continued. “There is one that still concerns me…” He turned to Isis and kept his gaze trained on her. “Do you think our tin man will ever acknowledge that he has a heart?”

Isis stepped away abruptly, smoothing imaginary wrinkles in her skirt. “Seto Kaiba’s heart is no concern of _mine_ ,” she huffed.

Pegasus smirked. “If that’s what you chose to believe, then, by all means, don’t allow me to dissuade you. But you and I both know that you have never made a habit of dealing in untruths.”

He stood, rolling back his shoulders and turning up his chin—still very much the regal king with whom he had once shared a soul. “Isn’t it time that we made our grand entrance? I do believe that our subjects are expecting us.”

-xxx-

“Okay, well, what can I say? I’ve done so much it’s hard to think of something here…”

“Just get on with it.”

“I’m trying to think of a good one, alright? There’s a very complex strategy to playing this game. I have to think of whatever will get the most of you guys out…”

“We are familiar with the mechanics of the game.”

“Take your time, Jou-kun.”

“Okay, I’ve got it—never have I ever—wait, huh— _Mai_?!” He leaped out of his chair and bounded across the lawn to meet her. “Where have you been this whole time? I didn’t even know you were here!”

Mai smiled despite herself, savoring the sparkling rush of warmth that flushed her face. “I’ve spent most of the night wishing that I wasn’t.”

He almost wrapped an arm around her shoulders. At the close of Battle City he wouldn’t have thought twice about clutching her to his chest, but those precious starburst days had faded into something distant, small, and pale. They weren’t dying anymore. “Psh, that’s ridiculous.” He smiled and struck a heroic full-chested, wide-legged pose. “I can guarantee that you’ll have a great time now that I’m here! C’mon—come sit with us.”

Mai looked to where Jounouchi was gesturing at the far end of the patio. Two exuberant grins and one stubborn scowl.

“I was just about to take off, Jounouchi…I have to get up early tomorrow…” Their eyes locked. This was a feeling that Mai was still learning to embrace—the feeling of taking something dark and delicate and gently holding it up to the light. Her smile widened. “Well, maybe just for a minute—it has been a while—”

“Yeah, that’s more like it! C’mon, everyone will be so excited to see you!”

Mai shook her head, but had to struggle to keep herself from skipping behind him. He had always had a way of making even the most dead and dreadful of places bubble like spring.

“What have you been up to, Mai?” Yuugi asked as Jounouchi pulled up an empty chair from a neighboring table. “I haven’t been keeping up with the professional circuit much lately…”

She shrugged. “Honestly there hasn’t been much to keep up with. All the major tournaments have basically dried up since Battle City—” she side-eyed Kaiba, whose face stiffened. “Too much bad press. But who knows—maybe after this expo things will start to look up.”

“I doubt it,” Kaiba seethed.

“Well, somebody’s got to save the reputation of this game. God knows I already have enough years of hostessing experience.”

“Nah, Mai, that won’t happen—don’t worry. You’re too smart and have got way too much class to end up working in some stupid club.”

“Ha, thanks, honey. I guess if worst comes to worst I could always take up poker or something. It certainly wouldn’t be the same though.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Yuugi spoke to the ice floating in his water. “Duel Monsters has been around for a long time. I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon.”

Kaiba snorted. “Only if Pegasus has enough sense to keep his mouth shut. No one’s going to be too eager to support Duel Monsters once they find out it’s an ancient Egyptian murder game.”

Mai raised a brow. “Hm—as opposed to a modern Japanese murder game? Face it, Pegasus certainly didn’t help—but no one’s done as much to hurt its reputation as you have.”

Mokuba was the only one who could feel the tremor steal down Seto’s back. “That’s not true!” He declared. “Nii-sama _invented_ the technology that _everyone_ uses to play Duel Monsters! It was Pegasus’ idea to use it as an excuse to hurt people!”

“That’s enough, Mokuba.” Seto’s voice had turned black.

“You might want to check your facts on that one, kid.”

“Look, you can _choose_ to blame me for destroying Duel Monsters’ reputation all you want—if it makes you feel better,” Kaiba sneered. “But don’t blame the game for not being able to save yours.”

Yuugi gaped and Jounouchi glowered, but Mai simply sighed and chuckled in shades of violet and blue. “It’s cute how you think you’re hurting my feelings. Or it would be, if it wasn’t so obvious and pathetic. Honey, I stopped taking your opinions seriously the second you rolled in flying a jet shaped like a dragon.”

Seto kicked the leg of the table so hard that it rattled. “At least I don’t advertise my incompetency across my chest.”

“Yeah, you let people discover it all on their own.”

“Hey, guys—let’s get along! We’ll all friends here, remember?” Jounouchi’s eyes darted back and forth across the table. Kaiba’s eyes were practically dripping acid, Mai’s were frozen solid.

“Yeah, so much for that.” Kaiba’s chair toppled behind him as he stormed into the darkness.

Mokuba reached limply into the shadows that his brother had left behind. “Uh, sorry about that.” He seemed to shrink as he spoke. “He, um, hasn’t been sleeping well.”

“Is Kaiba-kun okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

“Doesn’t give him the right to act like a dick to people,” Jounouchi huffed. “Mai didn’t come over here just to get insulted.”

“Relax, Jounouchi, I can handle myself against a brat with a big mouth—it comes with the territory.” She shrugged. “That was kind of fun, actually. I haven’t had the chance to do too many verbal take-downs in a while.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mokuba. I’m sure whatever it is that’s bothering him is just putting him on edge. Is it anything we can help with?”

Mokuba shrugged and gazed into the rough, noisy darkness. “I wish I knew…”

“Hey, you,” Mai poked Jounouchi on the arm. “How have you been? Managing to get by without me? Frankly I’m surprised you didn’t get yourself killed back there.”

Jounouchi grinned. “Only barely. Ah, you should have been there, Mai! It was amazing! And awful, but well, pretty cool.”

She sighed. “Sounds like a riot. I wish I had been, though. I would have liked to say goodbye to him…” she slowly turned towards Yuugi, features softened and pearly. “How has it been, kiddo?”

Yuugi laughed nervously. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m just glad that Atem finally found peace in the afterlife. That was what he really needed…”

Mai nodded. “Don’t we all.” She clasped his hand. “Just know that we’re here for you.”

“Yeah. Thanks!” The smile that started at Yuugi’s lips didn’t quite reach his eyes—but Mokuba was the only one who seemed to notice.

“You don’t have to pretend to be stronger than you really are,” he muttered. “Just look at what it does to nii-sama.”

Yuugi frowned and kneaded his hands. “But I’m not pretending. I really am happy for him. It just takes time to adjust, I guess. It’s weird to not always have someone to talk to.” He chuckled softly. “It’s funny—sometimes I still do talk to him and it feels weird that he never replies. It’s like—I’m reaching for something that just goes further and further away. It surprises me every time it happens, though I guess I should have learned by now.” He shrugged. “But I guess that’s something that’ll get easier…”

Mokuba frowned and slouched under the weight of a bitter blue wave of memory. “Trust me,” he sighed, “it won’t.”

-xxx-

Mai shifted closer to Jounouchi, trying not to notice that the warmth he radiated was softer and brighter than that released by the heat lamps.

“Shizuka told me about your father.” She spoke slowly—Shizuka had made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone, and Mai couldn’t help but fear that by breaking it she was endangering something small and defenseless. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah, don’t be sorry.” He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the table. “It was just a matter of time, honestly. That idiot never knew how to take care of himself.”

“Or you.”

He flashed her a jaunty, dangerous smile—a smile that had never rejected a challenge or turned away from a dare. “I did pretty well for myself though, huh?”

“If you say so.” She bit her lip. “She told me about your…situation.”

His expression clouded, and when he laughed the sound was jarring and derisive. “Which one?” he snapped. “The one about how I’ll never get into a decent university, never even get looked at for a real job—let alone hired—or about how we’re about this close from getting kicked out the country and the only person who can help me get out of it is that little terror over there?”

“Well, I was referring to the second one, but Jounouchi—“

“I’m sorry.” He hunched over the table, cradling his forehead in his palms and wincing. “I’m not usually like this. Just had a crummy day…”

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just overreacting.” He sighed and slouched against the back of his chair, expression vacant. “I was just studying with Yuugi this morning and—I don’t know—it’s just been so long.” He let out a short, brutal laugh. “I forgot how much I hate school I guess. Not looking forward to going back.”

“Then don’t.”

“What, you know I can’t do that! It’s just one more year—“

She scoffed. “And then it’s the rest of your life.”

“Whoa, aren’t you supposed to be the mature one here? Giving me good advice and wisdom and everything? I can’t just quit—you know that.”

“You can’t waste your life listening to other people tell you what to do, either. And it’s not quitting if you know what you’re doing.”

He laughed. “And who says I do? I have no idea what to do with my life. From where I’m standing, it’s only go to college and get a job or…end up like him.”

“That kind of life would make you miserable.”

“I’d be miserable either way. I’d rather be miserable and at least be able to pay the bills.”

Her voice slowed and buckled. “And what about me, then? I never finished school—do you think I’m the same type of person as your father?”

“No, Mai, of course not—“

“Then why don’t you believe in yourself the same way you believe in me? Jounouchi, you’re every bit as talented as me—and just as tough. If anyone is capable of breaking out and making it on their own, it’s you.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Believe me—it’s not easy, not even close. But it’s worth it.” She leaned closer to him, peering into the shadows on his face. “What’s gotten into you? The Jounouchi _I_ know would never go around sprouting this self-defeating bullcrap.”

He sighed and turned away. “I know. It’s not that I don’t believe in myself, it’s just that…things got harder faster than I expected.”

“Then you fight harder.”

“But…fight for what? Against who? I don’t have any enemies anymore, so it’s just like, what…fight the whole world?” He shook his head. “I don’t think I want that either. It’s fun to have a good challenge, but sometimes I’d like to just…be.”

“You do whatever it takes to get the life you want. And you don’t give up—ever. Even if you’re terrified.”

“I never said I was terrified.”

She smiled. A little of the spark was beginning to return to his eyes. “I could see it in you. It’s okay to be scared, you know—everything worth doing is worth being afraid of. Just don’t let it control you.”

-xxx-

A few sharp taps on the microphone were enough to shatter the sticky stupor of the party and stunt it into silence. Under the glare of the hastily-erected spotlight, Pegasus’ face looked even paler than anyone had remembered. His once fine skin had been carved by premature aging. His arms and hands—while as silky and elegant as ever—were frail, stiff. But he still sparkled.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Domino,” he smiled and bowed slightly, “my deepest thanks for your attention this evening—and your patience. Now,” he stepped off the podium and began to weave through the audience, the spotlight trailing behind him. “I daresay that what I am about to do may be considered a major faux pas in the international business community—but anyone who knows Industrial Illusions should by now know that I am not one for doing things conventionally.”

He stopped suddenly. Poised in the middle of the patio, illuminated by the restrained blaze of the heat lamps that flickered across his face and sharpened every shadow, his figure and his voice demanded the attention of everyone surrounding him. Everyone except the one person he was desperately seeking and could not find anywhere.

He sighed, but didn’t allow his smile to wane. “Tonight will be without any technical jargon or affectation—the kind of talk that obscures the truth more than reveals it. Yes, tonight I am going to do something that I should have done many years ago—something I should have done from the beginning: I’m going to tell the truth, and I’m going to apologize.” Mai, Jounouchi, Yuugi, Mokuba—his gaze fell on each of them in turn

“The past several years have been marred by hardship and tragedy in both my public and personal lives, and during a time of weakness, grief, and blind ambition—I succumbed to a power that I could scarcely understand—let alone control. When the Millennium Eye was in my possession I hid my pain and fear behind an enchanted golden mask, and I became a person that I loathe to recognize as myself. I was selfish, callous, and cruel, and I took advantage of the suffering and sentimentality of others as a tool to advance my own agenda, an agenda that defied all laws of nature and…decency.” His smile became faint and wistful, eyes slightly clouded. “The most difficult thing to acknowledge was that I could not blame the Eye for my behavior. Those impulses, that lust for power, had always been there—waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

“I suppose you are all wondering what any of this has to do with Duel Monsters. Well, as owning the Millennium Eye revealed to me the darkness in my heart, many of the events that followed revealed to us all the darkness inherent in this game we love. Perhaps some of us sensed it from the beginning—though they lacked the words to describe it. The less honorable among us may have harnessed this power to meet their own ends, and I daresay that the majority of us have felt the temptation.

“The truth is, when we play Duel Monsters we open the door to a part of ourselves—a dark, dangerous part—that we may not know we had. That is how the game has always been played, and I’m afraid there’s no escaping it. But this doesn’t mean that the game must end. It doesn’t mean that we must cower in fear of what we cannot fully understand. It _does_ mean that we must learn to control that door, and not let it control us. Some never learn to close it, some—once they finally force it shut—are too terrified to even contemplate approaching it again—but if my own years of darkness and torment have taught me anything, it’s that the door cannot be denied. It is inherent to each of us as it is inherent to Duel Monsters, and if we want to do good—to conquer our unsavory defects—we must acknowledge and accept them. It is impossible to overcome anything in ignorance.”

He paused, reached into his pocket, and held a card up to the light. Amber light melted into the surface of his Toon World card—each finger of flame casting light and shadow in equal measure. “I don’t regret being weak, being sad, or being scared. I regret turning those emotions into something far more sinister and dangerous. And I regret, more than anything else, the pain and grief that I inflicted on others because I did not have the courage to face my own. So,” his gaze returned to his audience. “I prostrate myself before you all tonight—to ask for your forgiveness, and your help.” The familiar playful smile returned to his face. “Duel Monsters may be weathering some of its darkest days—but as they say—it is darkest before the dawn.

“Starting here, tonight, I would like to make a pledge: to put the best of ourselves into our Duel Monsters decks, so that they might bring out the best in us. And together, we will give Duel Monsters something very rare and very precious: a second chance.”

-xxx-

Seto grimaced as he stomped into another puddle. His boots were now caked with a layer of mud, his face and hands sporting fine cuts and bruises. Occasionally he stopped to glare over his shoulder at the effervescent cloud of light still floating above the lawn and patio, snorted, and continued trudging deeper into the darkness.

He hadn’t told Mokuba that the dreams had come back. Worse than they had ever been before. Gone were the cold blue flames that had melted the dreams of his childhood into hot, shimmering plasma—in their place were the tight corners, bound hands, and sad gray-violet eyes that has tormented him while awake.

Mokuba told him that he woke punching his pillow and shouting in a language that they hadn’t spoken in over a decade. Seto told him it was nothing and skulked into the kitchen to boil milk.

The edge of the pond came on so suddenly that he would have fallen in if not for the angry sliver of his reflection that he caught glaring back at him. His head was throbbing and his fingers were still stiff from clenching Mokuba’s wrist. He could vaguely here the loops and turns of Pegasus’ voice, but the distance and the darkness blurred his words into a bleak ribbon of noise.

He tried to bite back the splintering wave of panic that swept over him once he realized what he had done.

He shouldn’t have left him—it was unsafe to be alone here.

 “You shouldn’t have stormed off like that.”

Kaiba stiffened. He sounded closer this time—close enough to touch. Strong enough to blow him over.

“When are you ever going to stop telling me how to live my life.”

“Hm, that’s entirely up to you. When are you going to start listening?”

“Not anytime soon.”

“Ah, well lucky for you I’m in no hurry.” A smirk rippled through his voice. “I only have all of eternity to wait for you to come your senses.”

Kaiba snorted and squared his shoulders. He refused to turn around—even as the footsteps behind him crept closer.

“When were you planning on telling him the truth? He may be thick but he’s hardly blind. Much more perceptive than you, actually.”

A hungry spark was kindled in his chest. “There’s nothing to tell.” A scoff from behind him. “It’s none of your business!” Why did he have to sound so damn smug? Omnipotence. Right. Had Yuugi found this so insufferable?

“It _is_ my business. You’re my responsibility, and I am yours. Or must I keep reminding you?” A sigh—exaggerated for dramatic effect, Kaiba had no doubt.

“I never asked to become the pet project of you or any of your little friends,” he snarled. “Why don’t you all just go away and stop trying to fix me?”

“We are trying to _help_ you—”

“And you’re doing a fan-fucking-tastic job!”

“Uh, Kaiba—who are you talking to?”

He was suddenly painfully aware of the thick sheen of sweat sticking to his forehead, the way his limbs felt too big and too soft, how he was sinking into the mud and the solid ground was crumbling away underneath him. How he had never felt so desperate or hollow.

“No one. Go away.”

“Nah, I can’t do that. Mokuba’s looking for you—he wants to leave soon.” When Kaiba didn’t respond Jounouchi crept closer—trying not to notice the mud seeping in through the holes in his shoes. “Hey—you okay?”

“Never been better.” He held out his hand, making sure Jounouchi got a good look at his cellphone in the moonlight. “You know they make these devices now that allow you to talk to people without standing right in front of them. Amazing how far society has advanced in the past few thousand years, isn’t it?”

“Ha, very funny, smartass.” Jounouchi snatched his wrist. “C’mon—unless you want Mokuba throwing a fit because he can’t find you…”

“You can’t make me go anywhere.” Kaiba sounded terse, but he made no attempt to take his hand back.

Jounouchi groaned. “So you’re going to get all stubborn on me, now? Well—fine.” He dropped Kaiba’s arm but stood closely behind him, fuming and breathing heavily. “Hey, I’ll tell you what,” he leaned closer, lowered his voice into an ebony whisper, and spoke to the nape of Kaiba’s neck. “You come with me now, or…I make you swim the fishies down there.”

“Hm, I’d like to see you try.”

“Oh, I’ll do more than try.” He stepped just close enough for the lapels of his jacket to brush against Kaiba’s back—a movement as fierce as striking a match against asphalt. Just close enough to feel his ribcage rattle and his back arch.

Kaiba’s laugh stung like smoke. The voices in his head were screaming. “If I’m going down then I’m taking you right along with me.”

Kaiba smelled like cedar and rosemary and somehow it made Jounouchi feel afraid—as if instead of stealing closer he should have been turning around and running as fast as he could in the opposite direction. He wondered what he smelled like—if the downiness and light of Yuugi’s house had rubbed off on him or if he still stunk like saltwater, mold, and blood.

Kaiba’s eyes flickered in his direction and he felt like his face had been set on fire. Hadn’t this been what he had wanted? Hadn’t this been the vision that had flickered on and off in the back of his mind as he had smoothed his hair, practiced lacing his tie in the mirror? That furtive dream was exhumed now—but it daunted him like death.

“You never went.” His voice as eerily still as the silence that rings in the moments before a shotgun blast—completely oblivious to its impending destruction.

“Huh?”

Kaiba rolled his eyes and slowly turned to face him. He bit his lip. His eyes were glowing, narrow, fierce. “Tell me something that you’ve never done.”

“Hey! Well I don’t know if I can remember right now…” Jounouchi took a hasty step back and rubbed the back of his head. “I-I can’t concentrate with you staring at me like that! It’s creepy.”

Kaiba smirked. “Try.” He leaned close enough to lick the words off Jounouchi’s lips. “And be quick about it so I can get this over with.”

“Uh…” Everything he wanted to say was spinning around the inside of his head in loud fluorescent blasts of red and orange. “I…”

He closed his eyes, tensed his chest, and thrust his shoulder forward—sending Kaiba toppling into the pond.

“W-What was that for?!”

Jounouchi peaked through his fingers to see Kaiba flailing wildly in the muck and darkness.

“You weren’t respecting my personal space!”

“Bullshit!”

“It’s true. Now you have to pay the price.”

“You’re such an idiot.”

“I just know how to stand up for myself.”

Kaiba looked much less threatening coated in a thick layer of pond scum and decomposing leaves, and Jounouchi couldn’t help but let out a poorly stifled laugh as he watched him struggle to his feet.

“Think this is funny.”

He sighed. “Only a little. I’m sorry, okay? It was just too tempting—I couldn’t resist.”

Seto snorted. “Impulse control that poor is a symptom of psychiatric disorder.”

“Yeah, whatever. C’mon,” he kneeled down and extended his hand. “I’ll help you.”

Kaiba glared. “What makes you think I would accept the help of someone who just shoved me into a lake,” he sneered. He wrapped his hand around Jounouchi’s wrist and pulled him forward. “And if you honestly believed I wouldn’t go through with it then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”

-xxx-

“I don’t know what to tell you, honey. I’ve looked all over this place and I can’t find him anywhere.”

Mokuba sighed and rested his hand on this chin. “Well, thanks for checking. I thought he would have come back by now…Maybe I should go look for him.”

“Don’t even think about it. The last thing we need is _two_ Kaibas on the loose.” Mai huffed as she sat down. “Isn’t it just like those boys to take off and leave us on babysitting duty.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“Trust me, by the time you’re my age you’ll think school kids look like babies, too.”

“Jou-kun has been gone for a long time…do you think we should call the security?”

“You don’t have to worry, Yuugi. I’m right here,” Jounouchi grumbled from behind him.

“Jou-kun…”

“What happened to you?”

“Oh nothing. I tripped.” Jounouchi glowered and tried to ignore the pointing and laughter coming from the other guests. As if he hadn’t looked shabby enough already.

“Did you find nii-sama?”

Jounouchi snorted. “Oh, I found him alright. He went inside to clean himself off.” He balked at Mai’s raised eyebrow. “What?! He tripped too.”

“Right.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I think you should have followed Kaiba’s example on this one. You look like a mess.”

-xxx-

Prowling down the gilded halls of the hotel, Seto matched every curious glance with a withering glare. Except one.

“You don’t need to look so fucking _disappointed_.”

“I assure you, I’m merely—surprised.”

“Right.” He continued to storm past her.

“I was looking for you.”

He stopped. “What for.” He turned—slightly begrudgingly—to face her, suit leaving a murky puddle on the floor.

Isis hesitated before replying. “There is still good in you.”

Kaiba bowed his head and smirked. “Of all the bullshit that’s come out of your mouth…”

Isis shook her head, eyes wide and dark. “I know what you’re trying to do. Don’t lie to yourself in order to avoid accepting your responsibilities.”

“I’m not lying,” Seto growled. He dug his heels into the plush white carpet, forcing mud into the fabric. “For the first time. You—” his voice became brittle and hollow. “You can’t just choose to believe whatever makes you feel good when there’s no evidence to support it.”

Isis wavered closer, trying the find his eyes in the mud splattered across his face. “Then see this as an opportunity to prove it yourself,” her face darkened, eyes grew fierce. “And stop trying to run away.”

Seto rolled his eyes and groaned. “Why do you care? You don’t need me anymore—remember?! Why don’t you just go back to where you came from and leave me alone?”

“I can’t. My world no longer exists—the promise of the future is all I have.”

“And you think I can give it to you.”

“No. I expect you to be prepared for it. The world is changing, and if you don’t change yourself with it—it will destroy you.”

“Don’t be stupid. Nothing’s changed.”

“Nii-sama! What happened to you?” Mokuba stopped a few feet away from him and peered up at him in bewilderment, as if afraid that he would implode on contact.

Seto sighed and grimaced. “Nothing. It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was going.”

“Hm, okay.” He still hovered slightly outside of Seto’s orbit, eyes wide and wary. His voice trembled slightly. “I think we should go home now.”


	11. Chapter 11

Seto shut his eyes as the warm, electric air whipped across his face. His throat tightened, heart raced. The same celestial flame that had burned him to the ground the first time the Other Yuugi had roused the card’s dormant spirit touched him again—and it roared.

Even after that first fire had gone out, the embers had continued to smolder inside him. And the echo of her roar had only became more agonized—an endless intoxicating call that beckoned him closer to the void—not to fall, but to kick off from the ground and soar into the sun.

Seto’s eyes snapped open, and he crashed back to Earth.

Mokuba had always had a habit of twirling his hair when he was nervous. It was standing on end now, sticky and matted with the same sweat that trickled down his forehead. His toes were grinding into the ground, his lip beginning to bleed where he was biting it. His eyes were shrapnel—and completely impenetrable to doubt or fear when he should have been terrified.

Seto leaned forward, nearly pressing his forehead against the glass. For a moment he could see everything at once: Mokuba—one small spark refusing to falter in the face of the raging inferno towering over him—and his own pale reflection floating above them.  And above, around, somehow between and inside them was a small girl with a broken collarbone and failing voice, a girl whose body had shattered under the weight of her own glorious soul.

But Seto blinked, and the girl had gone. All he could see was a glistening silver projection. It was nothing to fear, possessed nothing to revere. What had once been a powerful crescendo was now a tepid and empty silence that hung off the walls of the testing facility. And yet—

The sight still made his heart stop.

He still had to bite his tongue to keep from crying.

Seto jerked away from the window and pinched his shoulder blades together.

“How is he doing.”

Isono looked up from his monitor, slightly startled. “Quite well, actually. Heart rate is normal, blood pressure too—”

“Hm.” He crossed his arms and frowned. “The duel disk must not be delivering enough power.”

“Excuse me, sir, but—isn’t this a good thing? I need hardly remind you of the difficulties we’ve already encountered trying to market a device that has the reputation of sending able-bodied teenagers to the hospital.”

Seto turned back towards Mokuba. “I just want the game to feel exciting.”

He pretended that he couldn’t hear Isono scoff behind him.

Mokuba was, in fact, doing remarkably well. Allowing the computer to get three Blue Eyes onto the field had been a poor move and one that—Seto had noticed—could have easily been avoided. He was surprised that Mokuba hadn’t seen the opportunity or—perhaps, having seen it—failed to grasp it. Yet, his eyes weren’t widened by the realization that he had made a mistake, his face betrayed no tremor of shame or regret. And—Seto noticed—he wasn’t looking at the cards in his hand or his monster on the field. He wasn’t even looking at the dragon at all, but through it, to something that Seto couldn’t see.

Even as it was beginning to wrap its jaws around him, Mokuba didn’t tremble. He grinned. He smiled like the sun, like a blast of fresh air, as if he were reuniting with a long-lost and half-forgotten friend. He smiled as if he had been that friend, and he was finally coming home.

The dragon was lunging towards him, fast and fierce enough to tear the ground out from under his feet and bright enough to drain the color from his skin and loud—loud enough to fill every void in in the universe with a cruel, rapturous, angelic scream and Mokuba was the darkness in her eyes and the shadows in her heart and had they always been this way—so intertwined—as if they had burst from the same small singularity?

“I discard my Dragon Zombie to activate my spell card.” Mokuba spoke like a still, dark ripple. “And I play—Lightning Vortex!”

She had been dismantled—dissected—by knives of light and shadow. There had been a rupture that ran from the blackness beyond the stars into the center of the Earth and everything had erupted with darkness and emptiness and death. Her blood was crusted on his arms. Dripping down his chest. His voice shook when he tried to call her name. Her eyes were open but she didn’t see him _—_ she was staring, just staring ahead…

She had crumbled into ash between his fingers. But—still half-blinded by light and by black grief—Seto thought that he could glimpse what those ashes had become.

The arena was clear. Mokuba turned around and smiled.

“That’s enough.”

“What?”

“The simulation is over.”

“Wha—but why?”

Seto sighed and turned away. “Because I said so.” He gestured towards Isono. “Turn it off.”

Mokuba rushed at the glass. “I was about to win!”

“That’s conjecture.”

“I was!”

“You had no monsters on the field.”

“Neither did you!” Seto spun to face him. “I mean…the computer…”

“This was just a training exercise. The final outcome doesn’t matter.”

Mokuba scowled. “You can’t be serious! You’ve always said—”

“When am I not serious?” Seto closed his eyes and frowned. When he opened them again, his gaze was unfocused. “You did very well. Remember what you have learned for next time.” He marched out of the observation deck, shutting off the lights in the testing arena as he went.

Mokuba hurled his duel disk to the ground and raced after him.

“Nii-sama—”

“We’re not discussing this.”

Mokuba slid between the elevator doors just as they were about to close on him. “You’re right—we’re not. That’s the whole problem!” He frowned. “You never give me a straight answer about anything!”

“That’s not true.” Seto eyed the numbers flashing at the top of the elevator door. _28 29 303132_. He tried to suffocate the warm, syrupy, rushing feeling.

“It is though! You never told me about moving, you never told me about Egypt, and now--”

“You _want_ to move, we already talked about Egypt. It was…too complicated.”

Mokuba’s expression cooled slightly. “I know, but…it just doesn’t feel the same as it did before…” He shifted the weight between his feet. “You’re not telling me everything, either. I can tell. And it’s affecting me too, now.”

Seto sighed like a begrudgingly unclenching fist. “I know. But I’m still trying to figure it all out for myself, Mokuba. It’s…” He swallowed his words and wished that he could swallow more—wished that everything could disappear back inside and him and disappear so easily.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Mokuba looked scared now. Scared and small and alone in a way that he hadn’t in the duel arena.

“Why do you not trust me anymore?”

Seto felt the elevator jolt to a halt; its walls begin to reach in and strangle him. “I—what gave you that idea?!”

Mokuba shrugged. “I know that all the Egyptian magic and stuff is confusing, but it started before that—you know it did.”

“Wearenothavingthisconversation.”

“But that’s exactly what I mean!” Mokuba thrust his hands forward and far apart. “Why can’t we even talk about it?”

Seto’s only reply was rigid silence and pulsating veins.

“I was thinking about it the other day—when things really began to change. At first I thought it must have been when we moved in with Gozaburo, but that wasn’t really it—was it? We could stand him for a little while, when we were together… And then I thought maybe it was the first time you lost to Yuugi…but—but—” He words became thick with memory. “That wasn’t it, either. It was, it was—”

Seto grit his teeth. The earth was rattling again. It was steaming. It was lying, ignorant and half-asleep, totally unprepared for the vicious creature that was descending upon it—moments from ripping it apart.

“It was when Noa died!”

Seto slammed his fist into the wall. That name had been forbidden between them for so long that it had stopped existing, but now it came back in fire and twisted steel.

Mokuba’s voice was trembling. “We used to be friends, when we were all together. I just…I wish we could go back to the way things were before.”

Seto grimaced and spoke in angry shades of black. “That’s not possible. He’s dead.”

 “I know, but—” the elevators doors slid open, and Seto whisked past him down the hall. “ _We’re_ not.”

\--

The floor was shaking. The windows were rattling. The air was electric, bristling with fire and fear.

Seto was clinging to the edge of the desk, knuckles white, face whiter.

The office roared with silence and no one looked away from the screen when the lightning bolts began to fall. No one blinked and no one coughed or cowered even as the air started to swim with smoke and acid and ash and the stench of burning flesh and screaming. Endless endless endless screaming.

Only he did. His shoulders were shaking and he was gagging and his insides were about to come pouring out of his throat.

But that wasn’t true. Because he wasn’t Seto anymore. Seto was locked away in a box inside a box and Seto might have been screaming but he—he certainly was not. He was a smug boy with a sharp, haughty smile and neatly filed nails and bright green hair. Seto was dead and buried in a pile of rubble and blood and he—he was standing here, back straight, staring ahead, unblinking—unfeeling—not thinking at all of that little boy that they had thrown into the furnace that morning, just moments after his eyes closed. They hadn’t even bothered to change him out of his hospital gown, they hadn’t taken off the emergency room tag and it had melted into his wrist. They had remembered to cover his face in a long, white sheet. He wasn’t thinking at all of all the little boys who were joining him now.

Gozaburo clapped him on the back and it took all the strength he had not to collapse in on himself under the weight of his hand.

“You’ve done well, for once.” He laughed, then turned to address the rest of the room. “Now that this Solid Vision technology has demonstrated its potential, prepare a memo for our clients in Italy.” His smile was raw and bloody. “I believe we have just witnessed something of massive significance here—the dawn of a new world.”

\--

There was a knock on the door.

“Kaiba-sama…?”

Kaiba jerked upright and grimaced. His desk was a mess. Several stacks of paper had fallen on the floor. His Blue Eyes figurine had toppled over, and she wasn’t facing him.

“What.”

“There is a, um, Jounouchi-sama here to see you.”

“ _Sama_?” He muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s a first.”

“He says that it’s very important.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. He placed a finger to the side of his neck and winced. His heart was still racing.

“Send him in.” He wasn’t going to get any work done anyway.

Jounouchi stumbled slightly at the threshold. “I have to talk to you.” His voice spun and wavered the same way his feet did when he was trying to get somewhere in a hurry.

Seto sniffed. “They have phones for that.”

“Well—” Jounouchi rolled his eyes. “I tried that! But—” he gestured towards the trash can at the side of Kaiba’s desk, which was overflowing with discarded telephones. “You’ve made it pretty hard for people to get a message to you!”

Seto looked back and forth between Jounouchi’s exasperated face and the spot on his desk where his phone had once been.

“I even tried email, but it kept sending back errors!” He huffed. “ _And_ Mokuba said you threw out your cell phone? Well, whatever. I didn’t _want_ to have to come down here, but—” his irritation evaporated, and his eyes became dark and dull. “I need your help—with the— _thing_.”

“I already told you—”

“I know! But—” he stepped deeper into the office, first frantically, but then with greater caution. “I had a plan all laid out, right?” He spoke in a tense, low whisper. “I was going to wait until summer was over, when Shizuka wouldn’t be around and stuff, then take the train to Tokyo and do the papers myself, but…” He turned away.

“Get on with it.”

“Well….” Jounouchi ran his fingers through his hair. His eyes were glistening. “I’m going to have to go over there sooner than I thought…”

“So.”

“I don’t know how! I don’t know the first thing about breaking into office buildings or making forgeries or anything! I thought I would have time to figure it out, but,” he shook his head. “But no, it has to be now. As soon as possible.”

Seto sighed. “Hm. I assumed you wouldn’t have any trouble navigating the criminal underworld, given your background.”

Jounouchi shot him a bitter glare. “Hah, that’s rich. Do you even know what Domino City gangsters do? Or have you just watched too many movies? Cause let me tell you, it’s not that glamorous. And I was never even that good at it. No,” he laughed. “I’m no criminal mastermind, but you are. That’s why I came here.”

Seto raised his brows. “I’m not a criminal.”

“Yeah, of course you are. All rich guy types are. And you’ve done it before, so there’s no one more logical to ask.”

Seto groaned. His head was pounding so hard he could barely see. “I don’t want to get any more involved in your personal drama that I already am.”

“That’s the thing, though.” He grinned the same way he did when he drew a lucky card just in time to claim one of his trademark come-from-behind victories. “You’re already involved. You’ve invested in me, you can’t turn your back now.”

Seto frowned. “Says who.”

“I think it’s something they call a conscience? I’m sure you’ve got one locked away in there somewhere that you take out for special occasions.”

“Hmph.”

Jounouchi grinned. Kaiba was still scowling, but his posture was less rigid, his eyes less defensive.

“Ah, c’mon. I know you’re not working—let’s go on an adventure!”

\--

They left just after the sun set. Jounouchi had watched it sink into the horizon from the longue on the seventh floor—a thick smear of freshly slaughtered fuchsia, a color rich and sweet enough to eat.

Jounouchi had tried to convince Kaiba that they had to leave at once, but he had insisted they wait until the end of the day. So he had wasted six hours prowling what little of Kaiba Corp headquarters was open to the public and dodging the scathing glares of its employees.

But now the office was flushed out, leaving Jounouchi in the jaws of his mounting anxiety. He had tried dodging that, too—but it always seemed to find him. Lurking in the seams of the carpet, the casements of the windows, inside a crack in the bathroom window—every crevice had rattled static and black.

He sighed and looked out the window. The red seeped out of the sky and into all the cracks and fissures and filled them up. It flooded the building one floor at a time, soaked every surface, and tugged at the heels of the man who was standing behind him now, watching him as he gazed out the window.

Pressed against the window, Jounouchi’s silhouette was the tallest shape on the skyline.

“Do you want to go or not.”

“Huh? Ah—yeah! I’ve only been waiting for you for ages!”

“I was working,” he sneered. “I have more important things to do than run errands for you.” Seto had spent the last six hours arranging and rearranging his office furniture.

“Have you ever considered how many times I’ve come _this close_ to punching you in the face?”

Seto grinned. “So what’s stopping you?”

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Jounouchi mumbled.

They didn’t speak again until Kaiba’s keys were in the ignition.

“So? Are we gonna go or what?” Jounouchi tapped his fingers on the dashboard, seething at Kaiba as he leisurely adjusted the mirrors.

“Tell me why.”

Jounouchi sighed and scowled. “Don’t tell me I have to convince you _again_. We _just_ went over this!”

Seto turned to him. “I don’t like being told what to do, and I definitely do not like having to change my plans for other people—especially without just cause. So tell me why. Why tonight. And make it good or we’re not going.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, leather seats that were always slick and cold.

“Well, you remember how we—met—at the employee dorms?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“My dad’s…friend was supposed to meet me there that day, but he never showed up. For a couple days I thought—hoped—that he might have given up, but—” he shook his head. “No luck. He called me again last night, told me that he’d report us all in a week if I don’t pay him whatever it is that my dad owes him. Heck, I don’t even know how much it is. I don’t _want_ to know. So,” he smiled, weakly. “I just want to get this whole thing over with as soon as possible. I need to get on with my life and not—well—not feel so afraid all the time. Like I’m just some faker and everyone’s about to find me out. So long as this thing is hanging over me it’s like—like I’m not even a real person.” He laughed to hide the way his voice was beginning to shake. “Me and Shizuka are on the edge of losing everything, and it’s up to me to do whatever I can to keep that from happening.” He stuck out his lip defiantly.  “That a good enough reason for you?”

Seto continued staring at him for several moments, eyes wide around the edges, as if Jounouchi had just revealed an unexpected trap card that sent his entire strategy crumbling to ruin.

He turned the keys and the engine rumbled like a tank and whined like a falling bomb.

“It’ll have to do.”

\--

After fifteen minutes on the road Jounouchi was already wishing that he had taken the train.

The Domino City lights were dust behind them, the dark and quiet of the country ahead ripped to shreds by the glowering headlights of Kaiba’s car. Jounouchi’s heart kept time with the pounding of the engine. And the road was jagged and sharp; each time Kaiba made a sudden turn Jounouchi was sure that it would be their last. They were clinging to the edge of the coastline, just moments away from careening into the ocean.

“Hey—hey, Kaiba.” Jounouchi poked him on the arm, trying to ignore the warm, sticky feeling seeping up through his chest.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Try to guess what I’m thinking about.”

“Why do you insist on irritating me.”

“I just want a distraction, okay?! I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“Just don’t do it in the car.”

“Ugh!” Jounouchi flung himself against his seat. “I’m just kidding.”

“No, you’re not.”

Jounouchi glared at him. “Hmph. Okay, Mr. Know-It-All, what am I thinking about then?”

“Knowing you—probably nothing.”

“Nope.”

“I’m genuinely shocked.”

“Guess again.”

Seto sighed. “No.”

“God, why are you so stubborn?! It’s just a stupid game.”

“I’m not your babysitter. Leave me alone.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but leaving you alone might be a bit difficult given our current, uh, situation.”

“You could ride in the trunk.”

“Cute. Okay, I’ll start you off: animal, vegetable, or mineral? Mineral. There, you have nineteen more.”

Seto side-eyed him. “I’m going to make you ride in the trunk.”

Jounouchi grinned. So long as they were talking, the world racing past their window didn’t seem so ferocious and dark. The claws of the Ministry of Health building couldn’t seize him. The night was swallowed up by the promise of tomorrow, and all he could feel was the stirring of a glorious sunrise aching to be free.

“No you’re not.”

“Don’t test me.”

Jounouchi laughed. “Geez, doesn’t it kill you being so serious all the time? Would it really hurt _that much_ to lighten up every once in a while—and you know, actually have fun?” He gulped when Kaiba turned to face him, face bristling with cold fury. “You might want to, uh, keep your eyes on the road…”

“Who do you think you are.”

“I d—“

His voice steepened. “Oh no, I get it. You think you’re being funny, right? Or _helping_ me? That’s always been the explanation you and your idiot friends fall back on. You’ve all made it your project to _fix_ me, and you expect me to be grateful. And for what—for fucking with my mind, bossing me around, never giving me a moment of peace of quiet?!

“And,” he growled. “You had the nerve to expect me to embrace some—mystical bullshit—that destroyed the reputation of my company, endangered my family, and fucking nearly killed me and get offended when I wanted nothing to do with it! You thought it was all so easy,” he sneered. “Just ignore the fact that it’s dangerous, just fling yourself into this situation that you don’t understand and can’t control and that is going to _fucking destroy you_. Ignore all your doubts and _just_ _believe_ everything anyone with some stupid piece of Egyptian jewelry tells you and do everything they say because that’s the _nice_ thing to do.”

The tone of his voice changed suddenly from glowering coal to splintered ice. “You always talked about believing as if it were a choice I could make. None of you have ever understood me at all, but that’s never stopped you from telling me how to live my life. Just cut it out.”

“Oh, uh,” Jounouchi suddenly noticed that he had begun to cower against the far side of the car. “Well, maybe you’ve got a point. It just seemed natural at the time, that you would be involved. I never really thought—”

“That I was a fucking human being? No, you never did.”

“Hey, that’s not fair! We stuck our necks out for you a lot. More times than you deserved!”

“So that you could continue to use me.”

“That’s not true! Yuugi, Anzu, and me—we all think of you as a friend! Geez, can’t you at least see _that_?!”

Seto continued to glare at him for several moments. Jounouchi suddenly felt that the night had become several shades darker. “Have I seen it before.”

“Uh, what?”

“Your—whatever it is you’re thinking of. Have I seen it before.”

Jounouchi smiled. “No. Not in person, anyway.”

Seto turned back to the road.

“You know, uh, I don’t mean to be _bossy_ or anything—but if you want people to understand you, it might be easier if you open up to them a little bit.”

“I never said I wanted anyone to understand me. I said that I don’t want them shoving their judgment down my throat.”

“Okay, fine. Just don’t get annoyed when people don’t _get_ you, then.”

“Is it unique.”

“There’s only one as far as I know.” He paused. “Do you really want to be all alone?”

Seto’s jaw clenched. “Just drop it.”

“I don’t know…it just seems kind of…lonely.”

“I don’t live by your standards.”

“Is your life really so miserable that you just can’t stand to share any part of it with anyone else?”

Seto’s eyes flashed in his direction, but he only responded by tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

“I mean, just speaking from personal experience, the only times I’ve tried to shut people out as hard as you do was when I was…ashamed of myself I guess. Like, I didn’t want anyone else to know what was going on my life because I didn’t even want to face it myself. Is that’s what going on with you?”

“Why do you care.”

“Because I care about _you_!”

 “Because you pity me.”

“Well, kind of, yeah. If you want to be blunt about it.”

Seto grimaced as if he had just said a fowl word. “Don’t.”

Jounouchi snickered. “Look who’s being bossy now.”

“I’m under no obligation to change my way of life just to make you more comfortable.”

“Just thought I’d give you the opportunity, that’s all.”

“Hn.”

Jounouchi watched the ocean churning beyond the passenger window. He considered breaking the silence several times, but everything he wanted to say was consumed by black, swirling waves and dragged to the bottom of the ocean floor.

“Does it still exist.”

“Not really.”

“Not really? You have to give a yes or no answer.”

“ _Technically_ it still exists, but not in the same form it was made in.”

“What are you talking about.”

“It’s— _broken_. Most people probably wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it now, unless they knew what they were looking for.” He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “It took you forty-five minutes to ask that one question.”

“I wasn’t aware that this game had a time limit.”

“It doesn’t, but geez, you could try to move it along a little.”

“I’m strategizing. But I’m not surprised that that concept is unfamiliar to you.”

Jounouchi chuckled. “I don’t think you’re strategizing. You’re stalling. You have no idea.”

“I—”

“Nope. None..”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it. Ask me another question. Right now.”

Seto flexed his hands against the steering wheel. “Alright,” he seethed. “Here’s one I’ve been meaning to ask: how does a kid whose father fucked over his entire family with gambling debt get the bright idea of stacking his deck with chance cards? Now there’s a pathetic strategy.”

“I—I—well, I never thought about it that way before…”

Seto smirked. “It seems like you say that a lot. Do you prefer to have your cards do all the thinking for you?”

“No! That’s not it at all!” Jounouchi leaned his head back and gazed out at the road racing by. “Those cards have saved my butt when I was in some pretty tight situations.”

“Exactly. Relying on luck is the last resort of the completely desperate.”

“Well, they do come in handy.” Jounouchi sighed. “But I think there’s more to it than that…I-I think….”

“Well?”

“I guess you don’t get it because you’re always trying to be in control of everything all the time. Growing up, I never had control over anything. I couldn’t change what my parents did, what people thought of me. It was like the whole world was just—I don’t know—spinning around me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And I was just being dragged along. Luck was always something someone else had and I never did. I guess I like having it on my side every once in a while for a change.”

“That’s so stupid.”

Jounouchi bristled. “You asked a question, I gave an honest answer. If you don’t like it then that’s your problem.”

“Luck doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Jounouchi snorted. “Then what does? Beating people up and whining? I tried to do it that way, too—it didn’t turn out that well.”

“Conscious action.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Of course—”

“Conscious of _what_? You just can’t know everything. You can’t control everything.”

Seto made an angry sound in the back of this throat that morphed into scorching laughter. “Of course. That explains so much.”

“Explains what?”

“It’s no wonder you all lapped up all that mystical nonsense so easily. You think life is all miracles and luck and destiny. You’ve never even tried to own your own actions.”

“Hey!” Jounouchi slapped the dashboard hard enough to make the bones in his arm rattle. “I did try! And you know what happened?! I only hurt people!” The words rushed out of him like billows of steam, and they burned on contact just the same. “And can you be so arrogant, so pig-headed, that you honestly believe that you aren’t _lucky_ to be where you are?! You think someone just handed Kaiba Corp over to you because you _deserved_ it?!”

Kaiba had turned away from the road again. The lines of his face were frozen solid, but his eyes were thunderstorms. “Yes, that is precisely what I think.” He swallowed and didn’t speak again for several moments. “It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t destiny. I earned my position through the choices that I made. And at least I can acknowledge that. I’ve never tried to shrink from my responsibilities or hand them off to anyone else or any superstitious bullshit.”

“Neither have I.”

Seto scoffed. “And the heart of the cards? Don’t try to convince me that that’s anything more than some kind of psychological security blanket.”

Jounouchi scowled. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have too much of a problem with it when you needed a security blanket yourself. And you know it wasn’t bullshit! _We went to ancient Egypt_!”

Seto fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was tense, cold, and small. “Did we really?”

Jounouchi gawked at him. “Yeah—of course we did! Did you hit your head on the way back or something? _We were there_.”

“What makes you so sure.”

“I—” He could feel the fire blazing against his face, could hear Diabound’s sickening roar. He remembered dark caves and the blistering sand and battered lifeless bodies left to rot in the streets while the sky above them shattered and shook. “I—I just know. I mean, don’t you remember?”

“I remember entering a state of altered consciousness. Beyond that it’s impossible to draw firm conclusions. And besides,” he added, somewhat ominously. “Nothing changed. I looked it up.”

“Looked up what.”

 “Twenty-four acts of genocide have been committed since World War II--the exact same number as before we left.” When Jounouchi’s only response was furrowed brows he sighed and continued. “Do I really have to spell it out to you? Wherever we went—it doesn’t matter. Nothing we did made a difference. Everything is exactly the same as it was before.”

The world suddenly erupted with light. They had entered Tokyo.

Jounouchi leaned away from the window. Even past midnight the city was a roaring rainbow of fiber-optic streets. Jounouchi was amazed that the earth didn’t crumble under the weight of city’s endless eyes and arteries, that it didn’t drag the stars down into its orbit. The night seemed to fray at the edges and the fact that Tokyo was the first city in the world to see the sunrise suddenly struck him with a new significance.

“This place can’t be real,” he murmured.

“Out of all the places you’ve been—this is the one you think is make-believe?”

“It’s just so big.”

The layers of the city peeled away as they continued driving. The candy and sunshine colors faded from the sky, the streets grew quiet and cool and followed straight, sensical lines.

Seto stopped the car.

“Time to get out.”

Jounouchi bristled. “We’re…there. Already? Man, time sure flies when you’re having fun, right? Ha…”

Seto narrowed his eyes. His lips were twitching. “You’re not chickening out now. Come on—get out. We’re walking the rest of the way.”

Jounouchi’s hand hesitated a moment on the door handle.

“Hurry up,” Seto barked. “We’re going this way.”

Jounouchi followed Seto’s shadow through a large park, trying to avoid looking at the building looming ahead, trying to remember to breathe.

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this…”

Kaiba grunted. He wasn’t looking ahead, either. “Just stop talking.” He pulled a large dark object out of his overcoat.

Jounouchi’s footsteps quickened behind him. “What is that?”

“Relax—it’s just a Taser. A necessary precaution.”

“Just don’t point that thing at me.”

“Don’t get in my way and I won’t have to.” He chuckled and the air around them turned cold and rigid. The moonlight seemed to cut against his face, giving it a maniacal sharpness that Jounouchi had last seen on the frightening little boy who had sworn to drive Yuugi down to hell one holographic Blue Eyes attack at a time.

Jounouchi glanced again at the gun glimmering in his hands.

“Well are you coming or not.” His voice was cold, jagged—but strangely small. Jounouchi was familiar with the caustic tone of Kaiba’s mockery, the carefully paced and calculating way he talked when he was trying to prove a point. This was something entirely different, and it made his heart pound even as he had to bite down to keep his teeth from chattering.

He thought of his bed back at the game shop. The way Yuugi’s room was never completely dark because of the skylight and Yuugi had told him that Atem used to appear in that light and that had been the first way he had ever seen him. He had thought it was a dream.

And he thought of Shizuka asleep down the hall. Soon she would go back home.

He gulped, and his eyes darted to the building looming over them, to Kaiba, who looked like he was about to start spewing smoke. He suddenly understood why he hadn’t told Yuugi and Shizuka where he was going—why he hadn’t told them that he was going at all. They would be worn away in these brutal, steel-tipped nights.

Kaiba stopped him at the door and tried to wrench the papers out of his hand.

“Wait here.”

“Wha—” Jounouchi pulled away. “No way! I’m doing this myself.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. You don’t know what you’re doing—you said that yourself.”

“So, what—I’m supposed to just hang out down here? Why did you bring me here in the first place?” He rubbed eyes. “I could be sleeping right now, you know.”

“Because I’m not your errand boy.”

“Or you just wanted the company.”

Seto lunged forward, snatching the papers out of his hands.

“Hey, you can’t—”

“Wait here.”

“Those are _mine_.”

Seto laughed. “No, they’re not. Now wait here and don’t make a scene.”

“Oh, I’m the one making a scene?! I—”

He was alone. Kaiba had vanished.

Jounouchi snorted and leaned against the wall. “Out of all the people in the world…” He glared up at the rows of dark windows and sighed. He forced himself to unclench his fists. In a few hours the sun would rise, and he would never have to lurk in the shadows again.

\--

The building was shaking out of its foundations. They were screaming and crying, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. They didn’t know what was coming for them and they never would know because the instant it hit them they would be gone.

Seto stumbled down the hall. It was exactly as he had left it—these government buildings were frozen in time.

He counted five doors.

The lights flickered.

They had told him not to run. But what else could he do when the walls were collapsing and the shadows were catching up—tugging at his clothes and coiling around his neck? And what else could he do if he didn’t make it in time and he was too late to stop them and there was nothing he could do. He was sliding down the hall and there was nothing he could do.

He counted five doors.

Kaiba tugged open a file cabinet, tore out a manila folder.

The same way they tore out his IV.

Rearranging names on a family tree was just like rearranging the borders on a map. It was like blasting off cities and blasting off people. It was just like watching the flatline on a heart monitor. It was changing his clothes and dying his hair and burying his parents and changing his name. It was turning off the television when the demonstration was over.

But the city kept burning. Their partners kept clapping. The city kept burning and the people were still screaming as all the iron in their blood became gold and what did gold become if not more blood?

And his hand was still warm under it suddenly wasn’t.

For a moment, after he took out the old file and before he put in the new one, he was no one. The Jounouchi family was floating in space, flickering in and out of existence.

He laughed. The lights came back on.

All he had to do was erase some lines—a messy web of names and dates—and write in the new ones. And the Jounouchi family was standing on earth again. And so was Mokuba.

But there was one more coin to flip. He stared himself in the eye and they both knew that it would always come down to this. This hallway and this room and this stack of yellowed paper.

He let go of Noa’s hand, and the light was roaring in him now and blasting through him until there was nothing left but gold and screaming.

The building was shaking again.

\--

“Hey—hey! Anybody home in there?!”

Seto squirmed away from the pressure on his shoulders. “S-stop shaking…”

Jounouchi stepped away slightly and stared down at him. “What happened to you.”

“Nothing. I-I’m fine.”

Jounouchi scoffed. “You call this fine?! I mean…” His voice dried.

“Let’s just go. I want to get out of here.” Seto leapt to his feet, and the whole world was pounding and dark and angry. He sat back down.

“Yeah, you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.” Jounouchi paced slow semi-circles around him, each one slightly tighter than the one before. “Give me your keys, I’ll drive back.”

“Absolutely not. I’m fine. Just—” He jerked himself upright, breathing heavily and clutching his side. “Give me a minute.” He began staggering towards the car.

“You’re never going to make it.”

“Just shut up!”

“Okay. You’re fine. Totally normal. So…did you do it?”

Seto nodded. “Your family’s all legal now.” He stumbled over the loose gravel path. “Of course,” words forced out between ragged breaths. “There’s still the paperwork for the school and the hospital.” He was stumbling as if he were re-learning how to walk. But with each step the screaming softened into a smooth, low moan, the ghosts clawing at his chest lessened their grip, the shape of the dead little boy floating in front of him resolved into a shadow, into a light post, into Jounouchi—running towards him.

“That’s amazing!”

Seto flinched when Jounouchi flung his arms around his shoulders. “Get off of me!”

“Nah.” Jounouchi’s voice was explosive warmth and sunshine rushing against the nape of his neck. “I’m gonna hug you. You’ve earned it.”

“What a dubious honor.”

Jounouchi laughed, and as quickly as he had appeared—he was gone, streaking through the darkness. Seto could just make him out—running laps around the pond. His reflection was skipping across the sky.

Jounouchi flung himself down on the damp grass and grinned up at the diminishing night. He was bigger than the sky, higher than the lights flashing at the top of Tokyo tower. And he could run laps around the whole world and never get tired.

“Get over here. We’re leaving.” Seto was a pale, crumbling smudge in the darkness. The harder he spoke the more his knees buckled.

Jounouchi stood, slowly, but didn’t come any closer. He could feel the earth swelling up beneath him, as if a volcano were erupting at his feet. Perhaps he was the volcano. There was magma surging in his veins.

He knew that Seto was still yelling, but his voice was smoke and it was blowing away and Jounouchi was a force that had been born in the very center of the earth and was now, finally, breaking through the surface.

Every step was the biggest he had ever taken, every breath sharper and shallower. His thoughts were too big and too blurry for words so he didn’t think—only reached forward into the darkness and pulled Seto down to face him.

All the shadows were flayed and slaughtered. Sliver lightening and spurts of liquid gold. Fire. And simmering blood.

Seto pulled away. “Why did you do that?” He was pale and fragile enough to be crushed by moonlight. His eyes were wide and round and for a moment Jounouchi was reeled back to Duelist Kingdom—to the forest and the gun pressed against his jaw and all the fear that seemed to fester there—and it seemed that they had made a great journey through asteroid belts and empty space to return to exactly where they had been before.

“Are you afraid?” Jounouchi was still clutching Seto’s lapels.

“Is that why you did it?” Seto’s face was the cool, calm surface of a denoted bomb.

“I—I don’t know—”

Jounouchi flinched when Seto grasped his hair, and he held his breath as he pressed his fingers against his scalp. But his other hand hovered just above his skin, trembling as it traced the outline of his spine.

Seto could hear someone giggle over his shoulder. “You can’t do this on your own, you know.” He closed his eyes and when they kissed again he saw no charred landscapes or fireworks or scars. He saw silver claws and electric blue water and, he thought, fleetingingly—before all his thoughts were melted down—perhaps that was what he had been trying to see when Mokuba was in the duel arena and he had wanted to shatter the glass.

“Come on,” one of them mumbled, soft enough to float on the silence. “Let’s get out of here.”


	12. Chapter 12

Seto did not fully realize where he was until his head hit the doorframe. They had driven back to Domino in a flurry of tense silence, sidelong glances, and clumsy contact—hands that pressed too hard but never lingered, that barely grazed the skin but made it fester and burn. No one had suggested that they come here, but they had anyway—the result of a succession of random steps, gentle nudges and stabs in the dark—that in hindsight appeared completely inevitable.

“Oh, shit! Are you okay?” Jounouchi stepped away slightly—not enough to let him go.

“I’m fine, just—” Seto stumbled down the darkened hallway, trying to ignore the way his feet sank into the carpet. “It smells horrible in here.”

“Ah yeah, well the air conditioner’s been busted for a while, so in the summer everything gets kind of… _sticky_.”

“There’s mold growing on your walls.”

Jounouchi grimaced. “Okay, it may have gotten worse since I moved out.” He sighed sharply. “But I mean, so what? Would you rather go to Yuugi’s? Or your freaky haunted mansion? Or your _apartment_? Don’t tell me you need to do it on silk sheets or something stupid like that…”

“ _No_.” Seto snapped, not quite looking at him.

Jounouchi stepped closer, smiling in the shadow. “So, don’t complain.” He let himself float against Seto’s skin, held one of his hands against his lips. “You still have blisters.”

“I know.” Seto considered wrenching his hand away, but there was something about the lightless, fetid air of this place that made his limbs feel soft and distant and weak even as his head and heart and his breath were pounding, throbbing, hard.

“You didn’t keep the bandages on.”

“They got in the way.”

“Psh.” Jounouchi shook his head, turning Seto’s hand over in his own. “That’s how you get infections. You’re gonna turn into a big puss ball if you’re not careful.”

“Thanks for the advice, doctor.” Seto tried to pull his hand away, but felt like he was dragging it through syrup. “I know what I’m doing.”

Jounouchi chuckled. “I don’t think that you do.” He wrapped a hand around Seto’s wrist, gently pulling him closer. “You need to _relax_.”

The floor was becoming liquid. Seto could feel his vision go slack, begin to swim in the warm, heavy darkness. “Stop laughing at me.” He mumbled. He closed his eyes. Shook his head. Slowly. “This place isn’t healthy.”

Jounouchi continued laughing softly. He laughed like the low thunder of a rolling red ocean, like the anxious beating of his own breathless heart. “I grew up here, you know.”

“And Gozaburo built it.” Seto turned away again, forcing Jounouchi to kiss the corner of his jaw. He had to stand on his toes and hang off Seto’s shoulders to reach him.

“Come here,” he murmured, words beginning to melt along with his limbs. “It’s not going to hurt you—just for a couple hours.”

Seto glanced back at him. There was some kind of electric spark racing across his skin—something sharp and fierce that refused to settle. A tide was rising inside him—drowning him from the inside out. He bit the inside of his lip felt everything wash away.

“You don’t need to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

The twinkle in Jounouchi’s eyes was the only light left in the room. “You _look_ nervous.” He chuckled, pressing himself against Seto’s chest, pressing him into the wall—hard enough to force the air out of his lungs. “I promise I’m a very gentle lover.”

Seto grimaced and shoved him away. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Ha—like what?” He laughed again, but it was slightly harsher now. “I’m _trying_ to _seduce_ you.”

Seto pulled his features together and frowned. “Don’t.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. “So, what, you’d prefer I read the dictionary definitions or something?”

Seto stared pointedly into the darkness, arms crossed against his chest.

“Look, it’s obvious that you’re uncomfortable. I’m just trying to make you…slightly less uncomfortable.”

“You’re being stupid.”

Jounouchi grinned. “Well, yeah that too. It wouldn’t kill you to be stupid too, every once in a while.”

Seto huffed and rolled his eyes. Jounouchi seemed to take up too much space in the room. He was the one thing that had gravity, the one surface with sharp edges against a shadowy and unfocused background. The darkness didn’t stick to him, it didn’t weigh him down.

Seto clenched his fists. He sank deeper into the carpet with each step closer.

Jounouchi felt like he was standing at the base of a landslide. A few square inches of contact and everything was Kaiba’s cold, rigid hands tied up in his hair, the sharp weight of his shoulders, his breath a hot haze against his face, the way their teeth knocked when they moved too fast. And Seto kept reaching for him as if he were about to disappear, as if he could never reach him enough.

It was like being swept up in a storm and carried far away, leaving the ground and everything rough behind. Jounouchi floated in that feeling, hardly able to remember where on Earth he had left his body—given up completely, burned away as he rode a wave of light straight to the center of the sun. But even as his skin turned to mottled blisters and his breath turned to smoke and fire, one resolutely physical feeling tore up his insides: a hunger that was bigger than he was, that made his voice crack and his hands tremble as he clawed at Seto’s skin till all that was left of it were long red marks.

Seto saw nothing but burning black until he felt Jounouchi grabbing at his belt. He flinched, and the thing that had been so wild and vivid between them suddenly froze over.

“You okay?” Jounouchi spoke in low, lush shades of crimson.

Seto nodded, closed his eyes, swallowed.

“You know, we don’t have to—”

Jounouchi shuddered at the hand clapped over his mouth, shivered when Seto glared down at him the way he always did when they stood at opposite ends of the duel arena. When they could count the moments they had left to live in a neat little number on their wrists that always pulled them down to zero. When they hurt each other’s monsters instead of hurting each other.

“Get off me,” he growled, shoving Seto’s arm away. “I don’t like to be manhandled.”

“Then stop talking.”

Seto scowled but Jounouchi smirked. He rested one hand where Seto’s damp shirt clung to his chest, savored the restless heat on his skin. “Or what?”

Seto rolled his eyes and looked everywhere else in the room before he spoke again. “Stop talking like an idiot.”

Jounouchi tilted his head to the side. His grin grew wider. “Hey, this is just how I talk. It’s not my fault you’re just starting to notice now…”

Seto shook his head but couldn’t speak. His thoughts were running together into a white-electric blast. They were rushing out of his chest, seeping through Jounouchi’s palm. “This isn’t—you don’t usually—”

Jounouchi pressed his other hand against Seto’s hip, curled his fingers one by one under the waistband of his pants. Every touch was another rupture in Seto’s skin.

Jounouchi spoke slowly, letting his voice writhe between breaths the same way Seto did between his hands. “Don’t usually what?” He bit back a chuckle. “I’m not embarrassing you, am I? Cause personally, I think you’re probably not mature enough to be thinking about having sex if you can’t even _talk_ about it…” He pulled Seto closer until they could feel the pounding in each of other’s pulse, till they stuck together at the hips and shoulders. “So…” he wrenched down on the lapel of Seto’s jacket and whispered against his ear. “Do you want to fuck or not?”

Jounouchi gasped as Seto sprung away from him. “God,” he muttered. “Why are you so fucking awkward?”

Seto refused to reply. He stared in the darkness, tapped his foot, forced himself back together. He coughed several times and mumbled something that Jounouchi couldn’t understand.

“What?”

“I _said_ I _can’t_!” Seto snarled.

Jounouchi laughed dry and empty. “What are you talking about?” Seto scowled but didn’t reply. “Okay, okay, I get it—this is some kind of trust issues thing right? You need to let me catch you or something?”

Seto kicked at a hole in the carpet. The oily air of the apartment was coating the inside of his throat, making his voice come out dark and dirty. “It’s not an emotional issue,” he seethed.

Jounouchi titled his head. “Well, what is it then?”

Seto was silent for several moments. He listened to the churning of the ocean, pealed his eyes against the darkness around them that stubbornly refused to yield. “Forget it,” he muttered.

Seto recoiled as Jounouchi wafted toward him. His eyes looked brighter, sharper. He was smirking slightly. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” he laid a hand on Kaiba’s shoulder. “It happens to the best of us.” He laughed at Seto’s stricken expression. “Man, it’s too bad I didn’t know you’d be coming over. I could have got candles, incense, mood music…” He chuckled as Seto shook off his arm. “No, no, okay, I’ll be serious. It’s not a big deal, really.” He leaned into Seto’s chest, let his head rest against his neck. “I could help you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Seto growled, pulling away.

“Aw, come on, it’ll be fun…” He laughed softly. “And I’m not in a hurry. We have all night…”

“ _Fun_.” Seto huffed, shaking his head. “How can you think that this is _funny_?!”

Jounouchi shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t take this kind of stuff as personally as you do.” He sighed when Seto’s scowl refused to budge. “Okay well, whatever. Are you hungry or anything? I don’t want to just stand around not doing anything.”

“I don’t even want to know what you try to pass off for food around here.”

“Ha, very funny.” Jounouchi turned and walked toward the kitchen. “I do okay for myself.” He poked through the cabinets, trying not to smile too smugly as he felt Seto follow him. “It’s really not a big deal, you know,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s just a piping problem. Nerves. I told you you need to relax more.”

Seto snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yeah you better,” Jounouchi muttered, reaching for a package of crackers and pretending that he didn’t notice the expiration date. “How’s this?”

Seto’s face twitched. “Whatever.”

They sat together in silence on the kitchen floor. After a few minutes, the ropes that had seemed to bind them so painfully close became loose; the air lost its frantic temper. Jounouchi’s eyes began to ache with exhaustion and each time he blinked it became harder to open them again.

“So, what turns you on?”

Seto flinched away from him. “ _What_?!”

“It’s a fair question.” Jounouchi shrugged. “I don’t want to be let down again, so I’m going to be prepared. Come on, you owe me.”

“What makes you think I would ever do this again.”

Jounouchi smiled. “I’ve just got a feeling.”

Seto grimaced. “I don’t appreciate your feelings.”

“Don’t want to admit that I’m right, huh? Well, we’ll see…”

“Hn.”

Jounouchi paused, then couldn’t keep from smirking. “It’s dragons, huh?”

“What?!”

“I always told Yuugi, a guy spends _so much time and energy_ trying to make these fantasy creatures come to life, he’s gotta be into some weird shit. I mean, they’re just _so_ lifelike. Don’t tell me you never tried to test it out—”

“You think I invented Solid Vision technology so I could fuck a holographic dragon.”

“I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary.”

Jounouchi could nearly taste the revulsion in Seto’s face. “You come to the most irrational conclusions.” He muttered, then shock his head with mounting disgust. “And what were you doing discussing my sex life with Yuugi fucking Muto?!”

“As if there’s anything to discuss…”

“That’s not the point!” Seto tried to ignore the way that Jounouchi grinned smugly at him.

“Just chill, it was a stupid conversation anyway.”

“I can’t imagine a situation where that would ever be an appropriate topic of conversation.”

“Then you have a seriously limited imagination.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“No—that’s your entire problem!” Jounouchi turned to him. “You get so wound up about this kind of stuff. It doesn’t have to be super serious or weird. It is _supposed to be fun_.”

Seto twisted away from him and frowned. He bit down on the silence that surrounded him and swallowed it. He didn’t speak until Jounouchi nudged his shoulder. “I suppose I don’t have that kind of experience.”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Neither do I—not for real anyway. It’s in your attitude more than anything else.”

“I don’t have those types of attitudes.”

“You’re not into having sex?”

Seto spoke sourly. “I never had the opportunity to pursue the topic from that angle.”

Jounouchi let out an uneven laugh. “What? You went through puberty right? You weren’t interested then?”

“You remember what I was like at fourteen.” He grit his teeth. “I spent my adolescence locked in a library. There weren’t many _opportunities_.”

“Okay, fine. So what’s stopping you now?”

Seto stared at him and for a moment Jounouchi thought that it was out of anger. But the light in his eyes was soft and wide. “Nothing.” His voice was hollow and thin, and when he spoke the word seemed to disappear before either of them had a chance to hear it. “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Oh.” Jounouchi frowned. He leaned against Seto’s shoulder, glanced up at his face. Seto suddenly looked very small. Jounouchi thought it was the way his clothes seemed to bleed into the darkness, the way he looked like he was disappearing. “What would?”

Jounouchi had expected Kaiba to shove him off again, but he only shrugged. “Not your badgering.”

Jounouchi laughed. “Psh, everyone loves my badgering. You think Yuugi could have made it through Duelist Kingdom and Battle City without me there to cheer him on? Enthusiastic encouragement and sage advice— it’s what I do.”

“Don’t take credit for his achievements.”

“Hey, it’s not like that. Everything on the duel arena—that’s all Yuugi. But there’s more to winning than knowing all the right moves. You know that.”

Seto snorted and picked at a crack in the linoleum.

“You don’t have to do everything alone, you know,” Jounouchi continued, placing his hand over Seto’s.

“I—” Seto tugged at his voice to keep it steady, but it was ruptured in a way that felt too big and monstrous to fix. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Hm.” Jounouchi hummed. “I think that’s debatable.”

Seto tensed his shoulders and sneered. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know,” Jounouchi murmured. “You remind me a lot of myself sometimes—when I was younger.”

“We are nothing alike,” Seto snapped—a bit too quickly. “And I’m not your charity case.”

Jounouchi laughed. “You see, that’s the exact same thing I said to the social workers who used to stop by here all the time.” Jounouchi’s face turned slightly bitter at the memory. “That idea that you have to figure everything out on your own or you’re a total failure just—I don’t know—it holds you back.” He shrugged and leaned into Seto’s chest, smiled at everything taunt, warm, and jarring that rushed through him when he listened to his heartbeat. “I can’t imagine that you like being alone all the time.”

“Then it’s you who has a limited imagination.”

They sat together until the sun began to tear holes in the darkness—left behind only in the shards of their shadows. But even as the world began to slide into daylight, somewhere in Jounouchi’s mind it was still midnight. The desperate and bitter memories of cigarette-ash and bloody-knuckle nights and days that crunched together like cans in a trash compacter felt closer here than they did anywhere else. It was the thick, fetid air. The stains in the carpet and the cracks in the windows that he could never quite keep on the outside. There were stains and cracks in his dreams. He floated in and out of sleep, always dreaming that someone was lurking on the bottom of the ocean trying to snatch at his ankles. Kaiba was both his life vest and his heavy cinder block anchor.

By the time Jounouchi was fully awake, Kaiba was gone. In his place was a stack of manila folders containing photocopies of Jounouchi’s new birth records. Jounouchi stared at the crisp black lines—the web that connected him to the rest of the earth—and it took him a moment to remember where the papers had come from.


	13. No Masters or Kings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title for this chapter comes from the song Take Me to Church by Hozier

Jounouchi made it to Yuugi’s door just before the storm. It had chased him down the street—a dark, nervous energy that sank into his skin and almost carried him away. The sky cracked under the weight of everything that it strained to hold back, and just as Jounouchi sheepishly shut the front door, its resolve finally shattered into spears of lightning and a wall of steamy, silver rain.

Yuugi was waiting for him on the couch, eyes swollen with sleeplessness, starring at the bottom of his mug.

“Where have you been?” He whispered. “I was so worried…”

Jounouchi hovered at the doorway, stared at his shoes. “I’m sorry, Yuugi.” He mumbled. “It just took longer than I expected.” The lie made his skin burn.

Yuugi shook his head. “It’s okay, Jou-kun. As long as you’re alright.” He smiled. “At least Shizuka isn’t awake yet. I didn’t know what I should say if you weren’t back in time…”

Jounouchi winced and sighed. “Yeah, that would have been…” He shook his head and tried to clear the tension out, but he only seemed to reignite the cinders of his memories of the night before. He could feel his face begin to flush, his heart jump in his chest. “But hey, I’m here now! And check this out—” Jounouchi pulled the stack of manila folders out from under his jacket with a flourish, beaming. “Not too bad, huh?”

Yuugi sprung up and grinned. “That’s great! That means you’re almost done, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not over yet—I still have to get new documents to give to the school and hospital.”

He sat down and flipped through the files that Kaiba had given him. In the shadows and stench of his apartment they hadn’t quite come into focus, he hadn’t been able to fully convince himself that they were real. But in the soft light of Yuugi’s living room each drop of ink seemed to bubble with life. He could feel the roots of his family tree rushing into the earth, the leaves at the tips of its branches whispering against the edge of the sky. Everything was connecting together, and growing. And for a moment he didn’t care that it was all counterfeit, because he was standing in the boughs—golden, invulnerable, and ascendant. “Funny,” he murmured. “All this for a piece of paper.” He shook his head and yawned.  “Man, I’m exhausted.”

But as Jounouchi ruminated on the feeling, he wasn’t sure that it was exhaustion that he felt. Something wild and tumultuous was surging through him, dancing in the darkness behind his eyelids, tying knots in his abdomen.

“Yuugi? Onii-chan? What are you two doing up so early on a weekend?”

“Uh…” Jounouchi scrambled to hide the papers under a couch cushion.

“Studying for entrance exams!” Yuugi chirped, gesturing towards a stack of shiny test-prep books on the coffee table. “We only have a few more weeks to prepare.”

“Oh..”  Shizuka frowned and began to flip through one of the books. “Don’t you go to cram school for that?”

“We missed the sign-up deadline.” Yuugi replied, an odd combination of nervousness and regret playing across his face. “You know—Egypt.”

Shizuka nodded, eyes hovering on Jounouchi.

Jounouchi couldn’t tell how deep Yuugi’s lie went. The days immediately before their journey to Egypt had all rushed together—the days following their return were a sun-bleached blur. If such a deadline had existed, Jounouchi certainly hadn’t been concerned about meeting it.

“Oh, that’s awful. Isn’t it hard to study on your own?”

Jounouchi and Yuugi exchanged a cautious half-grin.

“I’m fairly optimistic.” Yuugi replied.

“Yeah,” Jounouchi laughed. “You’re looking at the dream team here! World-saving extraordinaires! We can handle a little test.”

Shizuka giggled. “If you insist.” She paused for a moment, biting her bottom lip. “I’m going out with Mai later, do you want to come?” She smirked at Jounouchi. “Or will you be too busy studying for that _little test_?”

“Whoa—Mai is still in Domino? I thought she took off after the showcase!”

Shizuka fidgeted with her hair, not quite looking at him. “I might have convinced her to stay a couple of weeks longer.” She shrugged, laughing softly. “You’re welcome to come.”

“I wish I could, but…” Jounouchi’s eyes darted over to Yuugi, to the pile of workbooks on the table and the stack of photocopies stashed in the couch. “Next time, I promise.”

Shizuka nodded. “Sure. Then you better study hard now to make up for it!”

When Shizuka had left Jounouchi collapsed on the couch, longing for a moment to sleep but unable to close his eyes. The room was too bright, every sound too sharp. The landscape of his memories was sharp cliffs, towering mountains, and a hungry, howling ocean.

-xxx-

Seto glared out his window, fingers twitching at his sides. The ground below was still swarming with protesters—a mess of swirling black bodies that seemed to pool around his feet. The rain had not been enough to wash them out of the streets, they didn’t quake under lightning and thunder. They had been camped outside his office since before he had snuck in that morning. He hadn’t listened to their chants or read their pamphlets, but one image—a skull and crossbones, sloppily painted on bright green poster board—reappeared every time he closed his eyes.

They said something about poison in the water, chemicals in the air. A toxic waste site at the edge of town and mass graves on the beaches of Korea.

He wanted to ball his fists, to yell like thunder _But that wasn’t me! I’m not responsible for any of those things_

But there was a mass graze buried in the heart of Egypt that he couldn’t forget, a hospital bed in Domino. So he bit his tongue and ripped his thoughts apart and tried to ignore his searing headache and the acid bubbling in his chest.

He sat down, laid his forehead on his desk.

On hot days like these the air conditioning system turned on at five in the morning to blast every warm corner with white frosty air. Seto had adjusted the thermostat in his office until the room was the temperature of winter, but there was still warmth on the edge of his scalp and under his fingertips and between his lips. Dangerous summer nights fluttered between his ribs and howled like rain and thunder down in the pit of his stomach.

It was insidious and awful and so sweet and sublime that—

That he couldn’t believe that all of the blood in his body hadn’t begun to surge out onto the carpet.

That he hadn’t dared to look too closely at his own reflection for fear that he wouldn’t recognize it.

That he had to quietly run his fingertips up and down his trembling forearms and wrap his hands around the base of this neck, just to listen to the way his pulse was screaming. To feel the way his heart was beating so hard, so fast, as if it were trying to run away.

Seto groaned and pounded his fist on the table.

He had beat the sun to his office, searching for silence and stillness and peace. But even here, in this room off ice-cold edges, everything was swimming and steaming and melting together and now Seto couldn’t breathe without still smelling him, couldn’t rest in the skin he had touched.

Seto slowly uncurled his fists and slid a finger along the lines on his palm. There was an eruption at the end of every nerve—a tender, unfamiliar pain at the thrill of being touched.

He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots the same way Jounouchi had. His body remembered every place that his hands had been. And the harder he tried to blot them out, the more the memories poured into him, desperate to be reignited.

Seto traced the outline of his collarbone through his shirt; let his fingers search out every unyielding seam in his clothing that seemed to exist solely to be broken apart.

He gripped his thighs and his hands were shaking. Dug his toes into the carpet. Squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pretend—if only for all these few dark and twisted moments—that nothing else mattered and nothing existed but the memory of his hot breath on the inside of his ear, the clumsy desperate way they had collided and clung together.

He held onto anything that he could reach and ripped and wrenched at it until it felt like every joint in his body was about to come loose. He was a storm choking on its own lightning, an overgrown forest holding its breath—helpless against the wrath of a single match.

He could have lost himself in a haze of steam and shadow, if it weren’t for the tap on his shoulder.

“Do you need a hand with that?” A snicker.

“Go away.”

“Oh, Seto—you _must_ have realized by now that it’s not nearly that easy.” There was a movement at his side, and Seto had to turn his head away to avoid the gaze of the figure sitting on the edge of his desk.

More laughter over his shoulder. “At least you could get it up this time—that must be a relief, hm?”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Seto muttered between grit teeth. “Why are you two still here? I’ve done everything you told me! And—And how can you touch me—”

The low laughter continued, and Seto flinched as a set of sharp fingernails dug into his scalp. “Oh, Seto, your willful naiveté isn’t nearly as charming as you believe it is.”

“I’m not—”

“ _Shhh_.” The hand twisted in his hair. “Honestly, Seto, you believe that you have fulfilled the task laid out before you? Did you believe it would be so simple? Hm, you’re an even bigger fool than I first imagined.”

Seto didn’t respond, and the chanting of the protesters and the drumbeat of the rain filled the silence that he left behind.

“Seto, look at me.”

“No.”

“ _Look_.”

A hand curled under his chin and jerked his face upwards, forcing him to lock eyes with a pair that was nearly identical to his own.

Seto wrenched himself away, fell out of his chair, scrambled across the room till his back was against the wall. “Go away,” he snarled. “I don’t need you!”

Seth and Noa exchanged a small, sardonic smile.

“Now, Seto, you can’t honestly believe that—can you?”

“Don’t tell me what to believe!”

Noa approached him first. There was something about watching him walk that made Seto feel nauseous. “Then stop being so stubborn and simply accept the truth.”

Noa sat next to him, pressed a hand against his chest. He smirked at Seto’s sharp, shallow breathing, at the way he struggled to keep himself so rigid and composed.

“Exciting, isn’t it?” He whispered, leaning against Seto’s ear. “Being touched? Being wanted—just for yourself?” He laughed. “ _For once_.”

Seto’s insides were screaming. “H-how are you doing this?! You—You’re not supposed to be able to touch me!”

Then they were both looming over him. Noa pushed up his damp shirt sleeves and his touch was lacerations and Indian burns. It was the same feverish way they had touched each other when they were children, when the only feeling they had known how to inflict was pain.

Seth kneeled at his side, continued to pull his hair. “That’s how this works, Seto. You want to touch _him_ , don’t you?” He chuckled. “If you allow him to touch you, then you allow us to as well.” He smiled as Seto shivered under the weight of his voice. “It’s inescapable.”

“Th-that can’t be true.”

“It is.” He dipped his head down, whispered into Seto’s ear. “That’s the price you pay…” His hand hovered briefly over Seto’s heart, then sunk lower, not content to stop until he felt Seto gasp and shudder. “For deciding to feel.” He pressed his lips against Seto’s neck, making sure he could feel his smirk. “You either have no emotions or you open yourself up to them all—no one is allowed to live half alive.” He pressed himself harder against Seto’s side, leaned a thigh across his hips. “You must accept that, and face your responsibilities fully.”

“No—I won’t! Go away!”

Noa laughed again. “So you’d rather be alone and empty forever?”

“I never said—”

“Then you don’t get a choice!” Noa snarled. He paused, leaned closer, licked his lips. “ _Murderer_.”

“Pathetic.”

“ _Shut up_!”

Seth furrowed his brow and turned to Noa. “Is he always this difficult?”

Noa nodded. “I’m afraid so. Seto has never been very good at admitting when he’s wrong about something.” His face twisted into a cruel smile. “Or being second best at anything.”

“Get away from me.”

Noa rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Only once I’m sure that you _understand_ me, Seto.”

“I understand!” Seto stood suddenly, flinging Seth and Noa away. “Stay away from me!” He snarled, panting, backing into the bookcase behind him. Seto felt a shudder and a bang, and everything began to fall down around him. Chess trophies, design awards, his honorary degrees—each hit him on the back of the head and across the shoulders as it fell. And eventually it was all too heavy, and he fell too.

Seth and Noa frowned down at him. Seto buried his face in his hands. The room was filling up with inky cold water—a rising tide of everything that was too large to control. He was going to be swallowed in it, swept up in a sea of memories that were too sharp and dark to remember. Drowned in feelings that were too big and deep and sharp to keep carefully locked away.

He could hear the chanting again. _Murderer murderer murderer pathetic loser weak fallible useless worthless nothing_

“You know that he can help you.” Noa pointed to the bookcase where one golden trophy remained on its shelf like the last patch of land in a bleak and endless sea.

“I don’t want _his_ help,” Seto muttered. But he couldn’t turn away from that one remaining golden light—the only thing that was steadfast and standing as the rest of the world rattled and fell apart.

“I know,” Noa sighed. He shrugged. “But just look at what doing everything alone has gotten you.”

There was a flash of lightning. Thunder so loud that the building seemed to jump off its foundations. When color and sound returned, Noa and Seth had vanished.

Seto shivered. He stood, though his legs were shaking, and staggered to his desk. He glared down at the pile of phones in his trash can, held his breath, and pulled one off the top. He collapsed into his chair and plugged it in as if he were wiring a bomb.

“Yuugi,” Seto’s voice was dry and uneven. “Is Jounouchi there. I need to talk to him.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line and for a moment all Seto could feel was his pounding heart and trembling fingers.

“Hey, what is it—”

“Meet me.”

“Wh—”

“Meet me. I—I want to try again.”

Seto slammed the phone back in its cradle before Jounouchi had a chance to respond. He sat in silence for several moments glaring at the phone and listening to the discordant sounds of the street. As he rose, straightened his clothes, and slunk out of the office, the pace of his heart and of his breathing never slowed.

-xxx-

The rain fell hard and fast, and Jounouchi was soaked by the time he reached his old apartment.

The ground was steam and drowning, and the inside of the apartment was a furnace. Jounouchi waded through the simmering darkness, trying to ignore the way the air made his eyes sting.

“Hey, anybody here?” He had whispered and tiptoed through this room too many times before. Those memories swam in every shadow.

He jumped when he collided with Kaiba’s shoulder. “Geez, you could have warned me! Or turned the light on or something…”

Seto stared at him for several moments before replying. “The electricity doesn’t work. The demolition crew disabled it.”

“Oh, right. I guess that was bound to happen eventually.” Jounouchi bristled as Seto began to orbit him, glaring at his shadow. “What are you doing…”

“You grew up here.”

“Pretty sure we’ve had this conversation before. Did you call me up to swap childhood stories or something? I actually have work to do, you know…”

“Right.” Seto snarled, flinched, continued pacing. His eyes darted to Jounouchi occasionally. “So why did you come?”

Jounouchi raised his brows and smiled smugly. “I figured you deserved a second chance.”

“Hmph.” Seto shook his head. “How _generous_ of you.”

“I’m just teasing. You should be able to handle a little joking at your expense every once in a while.”

Seto stopped pacing, glared out of the corner of his eyes. “And you’re a criminal.”

Jounouchi’s face became sharp with anger. “ _Was_.”

“Was. Right.” Seto snorted. “You’re too _good_ for that now, right?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Well, yeah—I’d like to think so. It’s been a while since I ran around with that crowd…” He frowned. “So, uh, why _did_ you ask me here? You’re acting kind of…creepier than usual.” He laughed. “I mean, if this is your way of flirting, it could use some work…”

Seto shut his eyes and shook his head. “No—it’s—I’m not trying to _flirt_ with you.” He scowled at the idea.  “I’m…” He turned back to Jounouchi, and his vision seemed to come into focus for the first time. “I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

Seto stepped closer to him—cautiously, as if afraid of triggering a trap. “How you got to be this way.”

“What are you talking about—” Jounouchi caught his breath when Seto gripped the back of his neck, fingers digging into the base of his scalp.

Seto pulled him closer until Jounouchi collapsed against his chest, breathing heavily. But just as Jounouchi was preparing to melt into his arms, Seto flinched and abruptly stepped away.

“Well, you’re certainly good at playing hard to get…” Jounouchi mumbled. He slid up to Seto’s side, curled an arm around his waist. He spoke as if he were striking a match—soft, sharp, as dangerous and as intimate as a flame clutched between his fingertips. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. C’mon—tell me what you _want_.”

Seto shuddered against him and Jounouchi could feel something in his rigid composure become unbound. It felt the same as when an earthquake had hit their house one summer, and all the dishes had rattled in the cabinets and there had been nowhere safe to stand. There was that same sense of danger in Seto now, and Jounouchi was seized by the same exhilaration. He pulled Seto closer until his sopping clothes had drenched them both.

Seto swayed slightly, clenched and unclenched his fists, shut his eyes. Even in the darkness all he could see were shades of gold and crimson, starbursts and explosions and the way Jounouchi glowed and burned like embers and coal. There wasn’t enough air for him to breathe, not enough space to think. He only existed in the places where their bodies touched, but the kind of life he felt there was too effervescent and light, too ravaging and raging and dark. Jounouchi was all around him, consuming him, turning him inside out.

He took several sharp, shaky breaths. Listened to the thrashing of the wind and rain outside the door, the way it collided with the sea and beat against every wall.

When he spoke, his voice was dry and brittle.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“W-what?!”

Seto swallowed, didn’t quite look at him. “Is that a problem?”

“N-no…” Jounouchi was riding the crest of a wave, careening forward. He was miles above the ground. “I don’t have a problem with that—I just didn’t think that that was what you would want.”

Seto shrugged.

“Well, then—” Jounouchi pulled Seto’s face down. They kissed as if they had been starving for it. And now there was nothing but a rush of hands and lips, surges of heat that left them desperate and shaking. Jounouchi shoved him backwards until his back was pressed against the wall and there was no space for light or air between them.

Jounouchi peeled away slightly and gazed around the room. “Uh, this way,” he mumbled, grimacing slightly and tugging at the collar of Seto’s shirt.

Jounouchi led him back through pools of musty shadow, to a small dark room in the back of the apartment where the walls seemed to sway and the floor sunk around their feet.

“Come here.” Jounouchi pulled him down to a ragged looking mattress on the floor and they both seemed to fall in. Jounouchi rolled on top of him and ran his tongue up his neck, laughed softly into his ear. “God, sorry, this is really gross. I’m all wet…” He sat up and peeled off his shirt, then twisted it in a rope until it made a puddle on the floor. Seto watched the way his eyes burned through the semidarkness, eventually coming to rest on his face and searing straight through it. “You sure you think this is a good idea?”

Seto groaned. “I’m almost certain that this is the single worst idea I’ve ever had.”

Jounouchi smiled slyly, then jolted. “Oh, uh…fuck. _Shit_.” He rushed out of the room, calling “I’ll be right back!” over his shoulder.

Seto could hear Jounouchi muttering under his breath as he rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. He returned a moment later, swinging a clear plastic bottle.

“What is that?”

“…Canola oil. I don’t think we have, uh, any of the real stuff around here.”

Seto frowned. “Why do you need a bottle of canola oil.”

“Ha, what?” Jounouchi’s face seemed to be caught halfway between a smile and a frown. “You really don’t know how this works, do you?”

“As if you do.”

“More than you do—that’s for sure! I took the time to look it up!” He blushed slightly when Seto raised a brow at him. “Hey, make as many faces as you want—at least I tried to educate myself.”

“Whatever.”

Jounouchi leaned towards him and licked his lips. Lightning split across his face. All Seto could see was the way the light caught in his eyes and how everything around him seemed to glow and swell and take up the entire room. That was how it felt with Jounouchi crushing down on his chest, grabbing at his clothes and biting his lips—Jounouchi was becoming bigger and harder and Seto was sinking and struggling to remain above water.

“You’re going to have to relax,” Jounouchi whispered in his ear. In the darkness he could hear the smile in his voice as he added, “if you want me to be able to get inside you.”

“It’s—difficult.”

“I know. I know.” Jounouchi paused, took Seto’s hand and held it against his mouth. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know…” Seto shuddered as Jounouchi sucked on his fingertips. “I think you’re pretty stupid.”

Jounouchi grinned. “Ha, nice. Then why does that make you?”

“Incredibly stupid.”

Jounouchi laughed and dropped his hand. He puffed out his chest and pulled back his head, gazing for a moment at the ceiling. Seto could feel the tension in his hips, the way his thighs clenched together to hold himself upright and to hold Seto between them. It was like standing paralyzed on the shore, watching the swelling surf, completely unable to run or to fathom what might happen to him when the wave finally came.

For a moment there was silence and Seto felt nothing at all, then he was caught up in a rush of hot water, thrown against the waves and tossed to the bottom of the ocean floor. The coast he knew was ripped apart and reconfigured, ground down into grains of sand and glass. And in the tumult and the darkness there was a knife-blade pain, a sword stabbed through his stomach that tore him in two.

The earth was shaking from the rotting foundations of their apartment complex to the weakness in Seto’s knees. He held his breath and pulled at anything that he could reach—anything that could keep him floating and alive. He snatched at Jounouchi’s wrists, pulled his hair, struggled to speak but could only groan and gasp.

Jounouchi was all frenetic energy and random impulses. Seto bit back the thought that he fucked the same way he dueled—thoughtless and chaotic and instinctual. But it was that same unpredictable motion that was upending him now. Jounouchi was the crest of his wave—the thick white foam that charged down at the earth, shattering under the weight of its own force.

And that was how Jounouchi finished on top of him—scattered, sparkling, and light—wetter now than he had been standing in the rain, mumbling “did it hurt?” into the shell of his ear between battered breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter strikes you as a little weird, that was probably intentional. This chapter also kind of marks a turning point in the narrative—I’m going to be changing the structure up a bit and the linearity of the progression of time is going to break down somewhat. It’s a little risky and maybe a little weird, so if anything is ever confusing or unclear please let me know! That is the only way I can get better : )


	14. Hope It's Your Bones That Shatter Not Mine

Between the day Gozaburo’s entourage departed and the night that he and Mokuba were officially collected, Seto didn’t sleep.

He had laid rigid in bed, head throbbing, eyes stinging, listening to the pounding of his pulse and every pinprick of silence. He had clawed at the edges of his bed, held his breath, kept his eyes peeled.

Each time he blinked he disappeared into immeasurable darkness.

It was a nightmare he had had before—quickening anger, flames erupting from his palms, taking a sword in his hands and running—ramming it right through some thick creature that quaked and cried out. Laughter breaking over his shoulders.

The dream had circled him for years, but there was something about Gozaburo—something about standing in his burly shadow and breathing his petrified air—that gave Seto’s dormant nightmares the strength to pounce—to sink their teeth into the back of his neck.

And now Seto felt that he was being hunted. Or perhaps that he had been caught long ago.

Usually, adoption was a ceremony. All the children would assemble in the big bay windows at the front of the house, press their hands and noses against the glass while the staff waved and blew kisses.

Seto and Mokuba left through the back door, in the middle of the night, with black bags over their heads.

They were sealed up in a metal can and lashed together with vinyl and leather and fear, shipped like contraband. Mokuba clung to him—pulling the back of his shirt and tugging on his sleeve. Before they boarded the plane someone pulled them apart and then it was all cold, artificial air, tight corners, and groundless gliding motion that made Seto feel sick.

He didn’t feel Mokuba again until they were shoved together in the backseat. He held Seto’s hand and in the stillness that surrounded them Seto could hear someone fighting back tears.

He always cried in this dream. After he drew out his blade and seemed to leave a piercing emptiness behind. After he heard him gasp, and cry. It was like waking up at the bottom of a frozen lake—pounding at the sky, knowing there would never be any escape from what he had done.

The stench of salt water and diesel fuel faded into the countryside, and the road grew smooth. No more stop lights or honking cars, just silence—absolute and exhausting.

Eyes squeezed shut, blood oozing out from between his fingers. He never wanted to see again, not now that nothing could be undone. Now that he was sealed inside his own skin.

The car growled down the gravel driveway. Mokuba flinched when Seto gripped his hand until he could feel the bones grinding together. They stumbled down a narrow hall, led into a basement where the air was damp and rotten and the slamming of the door was explosive and absolute.

This was always when Seto tried to wake up. In those last few moments before he opened his eyes. In his few precious seconds of blind ignorance when he could pretend that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, that there was still a chance that one of them might be saved.

They heard the door open, but there were no footsteps.

There was a strained, fragile cry. Seto clutched him against his chest with shaking arms.

There was a sharp, sardonic laugh. Seto could feel Mokuba trembling at his side.

Seto was screaming at himself to wake up. But this time he couldn’t. He was locked here, tied to this moment, strangled by the strings of fate. He bit his lip, shook his head, tried not to hear it when he asked _“Seth…why?”_

_“I don’t know. I’m so sorry—I just don’t know…”_

Someone ripped the bag off his head. Seto flinched and squinted, scowled at the small, wiry boy shining a flashlight into his eyes. They glared at each other for several moments.

“Hmph,” he snorted. “Father’s certainly done better. You don’t even _look_ like me.” His mouth twisted. “You don’t look very smart, either—though I guess I’ll have to see about _that_ personally.”

“What are you talking about.” Seto tried to keep his voice firm and bitter, but the dream was still burning off and he felt as if he was floating somewhere outside of himself, as if he only existed in the parts of his body that the light touched and that the boy could see.

“Oh, so the little dog can bark after all!” The boy cackled. “You must not be _totally_ useless then.”

“Where are we!” Seto snarled, balling his hands into fists.

The boy laughed and rolled away slightly. That was the first time Seto noticed—he rolled. “Isn’t it obvious, Seto? Seto, that is your name, isn’t it? For now, anyway. This is your new home, and,” he rolled around Seto in circles, smirking at him over his shoulder. “And I promise, _it will be your last_.” He stopped for a moment, pinning Seto under his exacting gaze. “Father told me about you. I don’t know how you did it—but I will figure out how you stole his title from him.”

“I won it.”

“Hah! As if a little stray dog like you could defeat _my_ father.” He wrinkled his nose, as if the idea emitted a foul odor. “I’m sure you think you’re very special, coming all this way on your own. But allow me to be the first to tell you: you’re not. Father’s dragged a whole string of boys through here, and none of them have been able to measure up to me. You’re delusional if you think you’ll survive more than two weeks here.”

“Survive…?” Mokuba whispered from Seto’s side. “What is he talking about?”

“Who’s there?!” The boy’s head spun around until he caught of glimpse of Mokuba shrinking away into the shadows. His eyes blazed. “There’s two of you?”

A door opened behind them and a pane of cold white light fell across the floor. Seto was able to get a good look at the boy for the first time. They must have been more or less the same age, and yet this boy was unusually small, as if his body had stopped growing while he was only half-formed. His face was fixed in a permanent sneer. From the waist up he was sharp, fierce, agile. But Seto’s stomach turned as his gaze drifted down and he saw the boy’s legs—thin and limp, hanging off the edge of his wheelchair.

“Father!” The boy cried. “Why are there two of them? And why—”

“That’s enough, Noa.” They felt Gozaburo’s voice more than heard it. The way he spoke seemed to rip the air apart.

“Stupid rosuke—he doesn’t even look like me!” Noa muttered under his breath. His eyes darted back to Seto, and for a moment they grew wide.

“That can be fixed, Noa. Now go back to your studies.”

Noa bowed his head. “Yes, father.” He turned his chair, but his eyes—narrowed into venomous slits— lingered on Seto for several moments until he rolled away. “Pathetic little dog,” he spat. “You’ll get exactly what’s coming to you—just like every other stupid kid who’s attempted to defeat me.”

“Seto,” Mokuba whispered. “W-what’s going on? What does he mean you don’t look like him?”

Seto shook his head. “I don’t know, Mokuba.”

-xxx-

Time moved strangely between them. When they were apart is was stretched thin, breathless and dilated to the point of breaking. As they approached one another each moment began to run into the next, until they were so close and each second so small that time turned to liquid and rushed over them like running water.

Jounouchi hunched his shoulders and scowled as he slunk from one strip of shadow to the next, trying to escape the attention of the hazmat and construction crews that crawled across the surface of the old factory and housing compound like flies, flickering in the sweltering haze. A part of him wanted to yell at them, to tell them off for trespassing in his home and picking it apart like carrion. But he shook his head and bit his tongue, and continued to shrink against the wall.

Kaiba, he imagined, didn’t have to take these kinds of precautions. He could probably march through any door in Domino and no one would so much as raise their voice against him. But, Jounouchi thought, there was at least one door behind which Kaiba wasn’t nearly so domineering—and _he_ had the key. Jounouchi chuckled darkly to himself as he stepped through puddles and over chunks of crumbling plaster, feeling the earth rattle to the beat of a distant jackhammer.

Jounouchi crept up to the front door and slowly turned his key in the lock, a small smile flickering across his face.  He could feel his heart pounding from his eardrums down to the soles of his feet.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. It took his lungs longer to adjust to the swampy air.

“You’re late.”

Jounouchi chuckled. “I didn’t know we were on such a tight time schedule.”

“I _do_ have to be at work.”

Jounouchi wiped his forehead and staggered forward, unsteady in the dusty light. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the silhouette of Kaiba perched on a barstool, arms and legs crossed, frowning. “You should take your coat off or something. It’s so hot in here.”

Seto flinched. “Everything in here is disgusting.”

Jounouchi grinned and sauntered over to him, poking him in the chest. “You’re gonna have to take it off _eventually_.” Seto didn’t look at him, but Jounouchi could make out the way his jaw moved as he struggled with the idea of speaking. “You know,” he murmured, leaning closer until his lips were against Seto’s ear, “I have places to be, too.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do too! I’ve been studying eight hours a day! And trying to find a job! And—” his breath suddenly deflated. “I’m just really fucking tired right now.”

Seto raised an eyebrow and leaned away slightly. “So why did you come?”

“I’m too nice to leave you sitting alone in the dark.” He paused. He felt disoriented for a moment, as if time had begun to run on a loop and everything was cycling through him like dirty laundry. Perhaps it was because he had sat here, alone in the dark, so many times himself. He reached for Seto’s hand and pressed it gently against his lips. “Besides,” he continued. “I need a break every once in a while.” He smiled against Seto’s skin and enjoyed the way it made him shiver—even in the heat. “So,” he added, voice slow and supple, “did you get all excited sitting here waiting for me?” He chuckled when Seto twisted his lips and didn’t reply. “Aw, come on—you don’t need to be embarrassed. I don’t blame you—if I were you I would be pretty excited too. I mean, I am pretty hot.”

“Hmph. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m just stating the honest truth.” He placed Seto’s hand on his own chest, where the sweat made his shirt damp and thin. He smirked when he felt Seto’s breath catch. “Who would have thought that you’d be so sensitive…”

“I’m not _sensitive_ ,” Seto growled, wrenching his hand away and crossing his arms.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

Seto examined Jounouchi out of the corner of his eye and chewed on the inside of his lip. “Really.”

Jounouchi laughed in a way that sounded like sunlight dancing across water. “I mean it. It’s kind of…endearing. But also a pain in the ass.”

“Hn.”

Jounouchi leaned into him again. Their skin was slick with sweat. Jounouchi plucked the loose fabric on the sleeves of Kaiba’s coat, rubbed it between his fingers. During these moments Jounouchi felt like he could make Kaiba dissolve until his fingers, he could breathe him in like mist. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

-xxx-

Seto scowled at his face in the mirror. “What are you going to do to me.”

“A few simple cosmetic changes,” a small bald man shuffled in circles around him, taking Seto’s chin in his hand and slowly turning his face. “You’ll scarcely notice the difference.” He chuckled at the way Seto stiffened at his touch. “Don’t be frightened, boy. It’s not going to hurt.”

Seto made a small sound of displeasure at the back of his throat and frowned. “I don’t see what the point of this is.”

Daimon released his face and leaned away, glanced again at the photo of Noa that he had tacked to the wall. “It’s really quite simple. The legacy of the Kaiba name has always passed from the father to his oldest son. Noa-sama is Kaiba-sama’s only child, so he will be the one to inherit Kaiba Corporation.”

“What does that have to do with me.”

“You are aware of Kaiba Corporation’s international reputation?”

Seto twitched slightly on his stool. “More or less.”

“So I’m sure you understand that, as a weapons manufacturer, it is vital that Kaiba Corp projects an image of austerity and strength in everything it does—from the products that it sells to—” he bit his lip. “To the people who present those products to the public.”

“You think that no one will buy bombs from a kid in a wheelchair.”

Daimon grimaced, and Seto saw a wisp of something vaguely resembling remorse steal across his face. “Noa-sama is a brilliant and audacious young man, and I’m sure that he will make a very effective leader of Kaiba Corp. But not everyone knows him as well as Kaiba-sama and I do.” He hesitated. “It is not our client’s way to take things slowly, or to make compromises. They need someone who they know they can trust immediately, someone that they know will defend their interests, someone who physically embodies the clout of the Kaiba family name--” he swallowed. “Someone who can stand.”

Seto felt his stomach drop. “I see.”

Daimon leaned so close that Seto could almost taste the staleness of his breath. “Of course it goes without saying that in the eyes of the public, you _are_ Noa Kaiba. Any slip in that veneer, any reason to doubt that you are not Kaiba-sama’s biological son and—” His face twisted. “You and your brother will be made to suffer immensely.”

Seto stared back at him, unblinking. The secrecy with which they had been spirited from the orphanage was suddenly clear. He wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, how many people in the world knew that they were here—and how many would notice that they had disappeared. He held his face frozen and hoped that all the traces of fear had been ironed out of his voice when he replied.

“I understand.”

Daimon gave him a broad, yellow-stained smile and ruffled his hair. “Kaiba-sama did say that you were quite intelligent. Now,” he plucked Noa’s picture off the wall and held it out in front of them. “Let’s start with your hair, shall we? Your color is completely wrong. And,” he poked the bridge of Seto’s nose. “Those glasses will have to go. They put people off.”

“But I can’t see without my glasses.”

Daimon brushed his concern aside. “We’ll address that later.” He unhooked the glasses from Seto’s ears, and the world suddenly fell out of focus.  


-xxx-

“What?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Jounouchi repeated, smiling slyly. “Tell me what you want to do to me.”

Kaiba frowned and recoiled. “ _Why_.”

“Why? Because it’s hot. I know you must have more going on up there than designs for duel disks.” He hooked a finger under the collar of Seto’s shirt. “Tell what you think about when you’re here waiting for me.”

“Mostly I wonder why you don’t have an air conditioner.”

“Hah. Well, you _could_ have taken your coat off,” Jounouchi purred. He stood and slowly slid Seto’s coat off his shoulders. Seto watched it fall to the ground with a small grimace, though he didn’t attempt to retrieve it.

Seto could feel the warm darkness in his voice simmering under his skin. He closed his eyes and breathed it in like hot embers, shuddering in the scathing wind that whipped through him.

Jounouchi’s hands were in his hair, around his neck, pressing the air out of his chest. And he laughed softly, like bubbling liquid gold.

Seto was floating on the last square of light in the entire world. He was surrounded on all sides by an ocean of impenetrable darkness and one movement out of place would send him careening down below, into a world of swirling sea monsters and deep, unending fear. Each time Jounouchi pressed his lips against his neck or grasped his hips, his fingers slacked around the edges, his lungs flooded with briny water, the sea wrapped itself around him like a thousand angry arms and dragged him down below.

“So, uh,” Seto coughed and leaned away. He smirked. “Do you know the story of Seth and Horus?”

Jounouchi paused and crinkled his brow. “Uh, no…?”

“No, I didn’t think that you would.” Seto sighed. “Ra was the first Egyptian god, and he foresaw that a child of the goddess would Nut overthrow him. He tried to prevent that from happening by putting a curse on her so that she would be unable to have children on any day in the year. Nut circumvented the curse by adding five new days to the year, and during those five days the gods Osiris, Horus the Elder, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys were born.

“The moment Osiris was born, everyone in Egypt recognized that he would be their greatest king. He did overthrow his father, then married Isis and became the ruler of the earth. Isis and Osiris taught the Egyptian people how to use the tides of the Nile to support agriculture. They made the world enlightened. Under their rule Egypt was peaceful.

“Seth hated Isis and Osiris. He was jealous of how much the people loved them, and he planned to kill Osiris and take his place. So Seth trapped Osiris inside a wooden crate and threw him into the Nile.

“Isis ran from Egypt in fear, taking her child Horus with her. She spent the rest of her life searching for the chest in which Osiris had died and trying to reconstruct his broken body.

“Horus was destined to avenge his father’s slaughter by murdering Seth. They feuded for years, and Seth hated Horus the same way he had hated Osiris. Seth was the god of darkness and destruction—he hated everyone. He wanted to humiliate Horus so badly that he would become a social disgrace, so he tricked Horus into believing that he wanted to make amends—then he got Horus incredibly drunk and raped him. But Horus was more clever than Seth gave him credit for, and he caught Seth’s semen in his hands and hid it. Then he took Seth’s cum to Isis, who hid it on a piece of Egyptian lettuce that she tricked Seth into eating.

“Seth didn’t know that he’d been tricked—so he went to the court to tell everyone how Horus had been disgraced. But when the court asked for proof, when they performed a spell to see where Seth’s semen had gone, it came out of his own body.”

Jounouchi was silent for several moments.

“Why the _fuck_ would you tell me that?!”

Seto smirked and stood up straighter on his stool. “I thought you and your friends all had a massive hard-on for anything related to ancient Egypt.”

“Ugh—no! Not like that. That’s so—”

“It gets better. Horus eventually kills Seth by stabbing him in the head.”

“Please don’t tell me about it. Ever.”

Seto shrugged. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

“Yes I can. I blame you very much for the horrible mental images you’ve put into my mind that I’m never going to be able to get out.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “It’s not that bad. What put you off? The fratricide?”

Jounouchi shook his head. “Let’s stop talking about this. Let’s just pretend that it never happened.”

Seto’s eyes suddenly became very dark, his face pale and sullen. “You _do_ realize that that’s what I’ve been _trying_ to do for _three fucking years_.”

Jounouchi laughed nervously. “W-What are you talking about?”

Seto’s voice became harsh and narrow. “Do you think it’s just a dumb _coincidence_ that I was named after the first god of death and destruction? Hmph. Don’t try to convince me of that now—not after you’ve spent the last three years jumping down my throat forcing me to accept something that I never wanted to be a part of.” He snorted. “You were all so eager to become ancient Egyptians—none of you stopped to do the research, did you?” He grimaced at Jounouchi’s blank expression. “Well,” he seethed. “ _I_ did.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Jounouchi stuttered, reaching out his hand. Seto recoiled from him. “I never meant for you to feel that way. I never really knew—”

“You never knew what you were getting into.”

“I-I guess.”

“So,” Seto’s smirked—a pale, cold sliver of light among the shadows. “Are you afraid of me?”

Jounouchi laughed. “Please, Kaiba—you’re not god.” He continued to snicker silently. “But I’ll tell you what—” he placed his hands on Kaiba’s shoulders. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll make a deal okay? You won’t rape me and I won’t stab you in the head.” His smile flickered out when he noticed that Seto’s face was still drawn and cold. “It’ll be okay,” he murmured, leaning closer until their legs began to stick together. “We’ll write our own ending to the story.”

-xxx-

In public he obediently appeared at Gozaburo’s arm. He memorized Noa’s incisive smile, learned to talk in his shrill, nasal voice and use his same proud, hard words. In time, he was grateful to have another name to wear during Gozaburo’s sales pitches and speeches—it was easier to sell armaments as Noa Kaiba than it was as himself.

Gozaburo recruited professors from across the globe who filtered through the Kaiba manor to lecture in Japanese military history, world languages, and nuclear thermodynamics. They taught Seto during the day, and at night Seto descended into the library—where he taught Noa. No one from the outside was allowed to see them together.

Seto often felt that the Kaiba mansion had never been built—it had risen out of the Earth at the dawn of time. Every wall felt ancient and haunted, each room seemed to ache with exhaustion, a longing for the reprieve of nonexistence. Noa roared through that pervasive silence like a cannonball. He never seemed to stop thinking—his fingers were always twitching with restless anger, his smirk never faltered, at times Seto was certain that he never closed his eyes. Learning to live alongside him was like learning how to disarm a bomb. He struggled, sweated, never stopped looking over his shoulder or glancing at the clock.

And Noa never stopped snickering when Seto fell asleep at his desk. He watched with a detached grin as Seto slowly slid into his nightmares, began to scream at them, began to cower when they screamed back. He would lean back in his chair, steeple his fingers, and repeat, “I _told_ you, _Seto_ —you were never a match for me.”

Mokuba and Noa were the only two people who still referred to Seto by his own name. Noa had a way of making it sound like an insult.

His only sanctuary was Mokuba’s room. It was the only place he could still breathe and dream. They would lie on their stomachs side-by-side in the moonlight, pouring over their sketches and notebooks and speaking in pearlescent whispers. Seto tried to bottle up those moments so that he might have something cool and fresh to drink during his parched and desolate hours at Gozaburo’s side. So that he could have something to stand on when he felt himself beginning to shrink and slip away.

 “Seto, can you show me your designs again?” Mokuba whispered.

Seto rummaged through a pile of crumpled graph paper and laid a notebook out in front of them, and it was like the room had suddenly begun to expand and sparkle with light. Most of the technical specifications of the project escaped Mokuba’s attention, but somehow, through the eraser marks and scribbles and smudges, he felt that he could catch a glimpse of something that stood apart from time and space. He loved to listen to Seto talk about his secret projects, the way his voice became bright, smooth, and soft.  Time seemed to drain away, the only thing that was real was what they created together, and those creations would continue to stand long after he and Seto had withered away and disappeared. Mokuba barely heard the words that Seto said, but felt it like frost when he suddenly stopped.

“Seto, what—”

Seto held up a hand. “Sh. I think someone is listening.” He narrowed his eyes and bit his lip. His face became cold.

“How every _observant_ of you, Seto.”

Seto jumped to his feet, fists balled and eyes flaring. “What are _you_ doing here.”

“Now, Seto, is that any way to talk to your dearest older brother?” Noa rolled out of the shadow. “Is it so wrong for me to want to enjoy your company?”

Seto grit his teeth. “You don’t enjoy anything about me. Get out—before I make you.”

Noa replied with a searing, mirthless laugh. “You wouldn’t dare _make_ me do anything, Seto. So long as you’re in this house you’re my father’s property. And—” he barred his teeth. “As my father’s heir, you essentially belong to _me_.” His eyes drifted from Seto to Mokuba. “And I would _hate_ to see you _jeopardize_ your place here by doing something rash. That would be such an _unsatisfactory_ conclusion for me.”

Seto growled from the center of his chest. “What do you want.”

“Give me your notebook.”

“No.”

Noa raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “ _No_? That’s not an acceptable response, Seto. Try again.”

“You can’t have it.”

“Seto—do I have to remind you of how precarious your situation here is? I could have you and your mangy brother thrown out in an instant—or worse. Would you really risk that for some silly sketches?”

“It’s not silly, it’s—”

“Oh, I know.” Noa’s eyes lit up in a way that made Seto and Mokuba feel queasy. “That’s why I want it. For Kaiba Corp—for _me_. So—what is it? Are you really going to make life so unnecessarily difficult for yourself?”

Mokuba forgot to breathe as he saw Seto quiver in the darkness. Seto had always been good at keeping his face distant and passive—Mokuba was sure he was the only one he could see the way his lower lip trembled. When he spoke again his voice was fluid and formless.

“But it’s _mine_ —I don’t want—I don’t want it turned into weapons.” His hands were visibly shaking now, his eyes stinging.

“Seto,” Noa’s voice became maliciously sweet. “Is this _really_ the time to make an abstract moral point? Now—when I’ve found you out of bed after dark, when I could crush the lives of you and your little brother between my fingers without a second thought? Is this the fight you would have make you a martyr, and Mokuba a hapless victim? Think about _that_ , Seto.”

Seto seemed to look everywhere in the room but Noa. For a moment his eyes fell on Mokuba, and Mokuba felt a weight there that would never truly leave him. Seto swallowed and sighed. He stepped forward into the darkness, and extended his hand. “Take it.”

Noa snatched the notebook out of Seto’s hands and furrowed his brow in disgust. “Ugh—you don’t need to cry about it.” He tucked the notebook under his arm and slid back into shadow, leaving Seto and Mokuba submerged in a deeper darkness than either of them could remember.

-xxx-

“It’s always like the first time with you,” Jounouchi muttered, rubbing Seto’s shoulders. “Are you ever going to learn how to relax around me?”

Seto clenched his jaw. “Saying it that way doesn’t make it any easier.” His voice burned.

“Yeah I’m sorry I guess that’s true.” He kissed the base of Seto’s neck. “I _was_ trying earlier,” he added. “You kind of killed the moment—so that one’s on you.”

“Hn. Whatever.” Seto tried to keep from grimacing as Jounouchi leaned against his chest. He closed his eyes, tried to focus on the way Jounouchi always smelled like earth and the back of a spice cabinet—even when he was filthy and sweating. He bit his lip. “Do you—have any suggestions?” He winced at the strained tone of his voice.

“For what?”

“For how to—handle this.”

Jounouchi smiled at him in a way that made Seto think that he was the first person to ever do it properly. It was completely fearless, as if no pain had ever touched him.

Jounouchi reached up and brushed the hair away from his eyes. “I have _a lot_.”

“Well?”

“Well,” Jounouchi furrowed his brow. “I think whatever’s going on in your head is holding you back. You have to let that stuff go—whatever it is that’s making you so tense.” He leaned in slightly closer when Seto didn’t reply. “You do want to able to, don’t you? I mean like—”

“I know what you mean!” Seto snarled, balling his fists.

“So you’ve got to try! Just let go _a little_.”

Seto bit his lip and didn’t look at him. “And then what will I have to hold onto?”

Jounouchi smiled. “Well, me, for one. You don’t seem to have a problem doing that most of the time.”

“Whatever.”

Jounouchi laughed. “Hey, like I said earlier—it’s endearing.” He covered Seto’s mouth with a sloppy kiss. Seto could feel Jounouchi’s heart pounding against his chest. In these moments, with their skin so close and their lips locked together, he couldn’t believe that Jounouchi was mere flesh and blood—made from the same fallible parts that he was. Jounouchi felt like a surge of wind, a solar flare or a meteorite. He ripped through everything and made it look heroic and charming.

Even when they were closest—when their skin began to melt together and their breath came at the same ragged pace, Jounouchi seemed to float above him, to move with a force that could never be contained within just one person. He always seemed to be running, to be racing towards something that he was convinced would slip out of his grasp forever, until—at the last possible moment—he seized it in his fist, kicked over a mountain. And Seto would feel the residual lightness fluttering inside him for several hours afterward—until Jounouchi’s cum slid out of him in the middle of a meeting and he had to sit there grimacing in silence for the next thirty-five minutes.

“Tell me if it’s working,” Jounouchi muttered against his ear. “I really want to make you come.”

Seto stabbed his fingers into his back, not content to stop until he could feel Jounouchi wince slightly.

He had planned to reply, but with a brutal thrust he lost his words in a wave of pale fog. He was stripped of his direction, his grip on time, his balance. His name faded away. The architecture of his memories crumbled into ruin.

He didn’t feel the frantic convulsions in his body—he shuddered the same way the earth shuddered when it was broken and drilled apart. He lied dormant like the vacant coast. In a strange, inverted moment, he was a spider web and a clock and shattered glass, and, at last, absolutely nothing at all—nothing compared to the shadow that loomed over him like a solar eclipse, nothing compared to the ancient enormity the feelings that rattled his soul.

When he resurfaced there were tears in his eyes, but he couldn’t remember crying.

-xxx-

“Are you ever going to stop sulking, Seto?”

Seto flinched but didn’t turn away from his work. “Give me my designs back.”

Noa shrugged and replied with airy indifference. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’ve turned them over to father—they belong to Kaiba Corp now.”

Seto frowned but didn’t speak. He continued typing—pounding harder on the keys.

“I’ve done you a favor, you know.”

“Hmph. Explain _how_.”

Noa rolled his eyes. “You thought you were quite tough before you came here, didn’t you? I’m sure you have some tragic backstory about how you lost your parents and all your other family rejected you—not that I would blame them—so it was just you and Mokuba, together and alone against the whole rest of the world?” He smirked when Seto glared at him out of the corner of his eye but didn’t respond. “Well let me tell you, Seto—you know _nothing_ about _true_ suffering.”

“And you do?” Seto scoffed.

“Yes.”  Noa’s voice became dark, hard, and unbalanced. “Seto, have you ever killed someone?”

The question sizzled between them like static electricity for several moments.

“I have,” Noa continued. “It’s not something that most people would enjoy.”

“But I’m sure you got a kick out of it.”

“Seto, I—” He rolled closer, and glanced furtively around the room. “There’s something about your life here that you haven’t learned to appreciate yet, so allow me the one to enlighten you: there isn’t room here for the both of us, especially since you insisted on brining someone else with you.”

Seto frowned. “You sound ridiculous. Leave me alone, I’m trying to work.” Seto tried to turn back to the computer, but Noa seized his arm.

“Listen to me! Do you honestly believe that my father would plan to keep two sons when all he needs is one?” He pulled on Seto’s arm frantically. “He isn’t kind! He doesn’t make those kinds of allowances!”

Noa’s face was contorted, his eyes wide and shining. Seto frowned. “So why am I here?”

“Why do you think?!” Noa snarled, throwing Seto’s arm back at him. “To challenge me! So that I can have someone of my own caliber to compete with and destroy!” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice rattled at the edges. “You’re not the first Seto. Father’s brought many boys through here already, and I’ve seen them all go. They all get taken away. They were never good enough—they couldn’t compete with me—none of them!” He paused, took a breath, then began to speak with more composure. “It’s about time you learned this lesson: everything is a weapon here. Even your stupid little hologram designs. That’s the way it’s going to be between us, Seto. Because I can tell, Seto—I could tell from the very first moment that I laid eyes on you—that one of us will be the last.”

-xxx-

“Hey,” Jounouchi poked him the back. “Are you okay? I hate to be that guy, but don’t you have to go back to work? It’s been like an hour.”

Seto pulled the sheet on Jounouchi’s bed tighter up under his chin. “Go away.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“No.”

Jounouchi sighed and shifted in bed. “I don’t want to leave you alone here.”

“Tch. I arrived alone.”

“I know, but—” Jounouchi ran a cautious finger along his shoulder blade, traced the ridges of his spine. “You just seem kind of out of it.”

Seto clenched his eyes shut. His head was pounding. He felt like rotten land—stripped, plowed, and wasted. Each breath flailed in his ribcage like a drowning fish.

“I’m fine.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?”

Seto frowned. “I’m an excellent liar.”

Jounouchi snorted. “I guess that’s a matter of perception.” He stared at the ceiling, at the dust and dirt that swirled in the air around them. “Do you want to go for a walk or something? This place is going to give me cancer I swear.”

Seto never replied, but drifted out the door after like a shadow.

Outside the sky was bleached white and blistering. A thick blanket of sea fog had crept up the coast line and swallowed almost the entire compound. They didn’t speak as they trudged through the drift and debris, and sometimes they lost sight of one another in the mist. Jounouchi knew Seto only by the way he would wrench his wrist when he was about to stumble and fall.

Jounouchi didn’t speak again until he was sitting on the edge of Domino Peer, squinting hard to see where the sky began to eat through the horizon. “Man, I really hate that place.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Too many bad memories.”

Seto watched him out of the corner of his eye. “Like what.”

“Oh…” Jounouchi picked up a stone and tossed it into the water. “It’s hard to remember any one thing. My parents were always fighting. I was always fighting—with everyone. I guess I just thought that was the only way I could get anyone to listen to me, speaking with my fists like that. And it’s not like I had anything to lose.” He stared at his hands and slowly opened and closed his fist, as if he could still feel the sting in his knuckles. “I just wanted someone to listen to me, to take me seriously. And when no did I stopped taking myself seriously. I became what everyone expected to be, and I tried not to think about how much I hated myself for it. I told myself that I was doing what I had to do to stay alive, and the way I was living was the only way I could be.”

His voice began to waver. “Shizuka was the only one I had—she believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. She kept me alive, just because I knew she’d be crushed if anything happened to me. And I thought, if this girl who’s so smart and so sweet can love me so much—I can’t be totally worthless, can I?

“She’s always loved people more than they deserve, had more faith in people, too.” He laughed in a way that sounded more like a growl. “Even right now, she’s staying with me and Yuugi because she’s got this hope that our mom will come back and our parents will fall in love or something.” He shrugged.

“I thought that you said that anything was possible.”

“Ha, I guess I did say that, didn’t I?” He bit his lip. “The thing is, I think they do love each other. But they hate each other too. And, I don’t know—I just don’t think it’s possible to love someone and resent them at the same time. Maybe you can make it work for a little while, but at some point one of those feelings is going to be stronger, and at that point there’s really nothing you can do.”

Seto a little of that brutal emptiness seep into him again. For a moment, starring at Jounouchi’s profile, he couldn’t tell which one of them was speaking.

-xxx-

“That’s ridiculous.”

Noa scoffed. “It’s simple fact.” He was pulling away, straightening his clothes, and speaking in cool, clipped phrases—trying to erase the memory of his outburst. “And there’s nothing you can do to change it. That is what makes sense, isn’t it? Father’s terrified that someone is going to find out about you and then it will be all over for him. No one would accept his as president if they found out that he can’t—” his voice burned with bitterness. “Produce _viable offspring_. Keeping two versions of the same person around is too much of a liability for him to maintain that state permanently. And,” his voice caught for a moment. “Once my would-be replacements have demonstrated their complete lack of competency, it’s far too dangerous to let them live.”

“So, that means—”

“That you’ve led you and your brother into a death trap, yes.” Noa flashed a harsh, ironic smile. “How does that _feel_ , Seto?”

Seto starred at his hands, at the computer screen and his workbook, without really seeing anything. Everything suddenly seemed dull and gray, painted in shades of decay. “And you’re just going to accept that? That people are just going to die for you?”

“What choice do I have?”

“Fight him! Don’t let him keep you locked up like this!” Seto pounded his fist on the table. “Don’t you see that I’m not the person you should be fighting? I never agreed to this! Fight him—he’s the one that’s putting you in this situation!”

“Seto, keep your voice down! Don’t you know that they can hear us?”

“I don’t care—”

“You should,” Noa interrupted him severely. “I would care very much if I were you.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

Noa raised his eyebrows. “Then you don’t know what he’s capable of. It’s funny that you expect so much sympathy from an arms dealer. I’m certain that father stopped being human many years ago. He’s not like you, Seto. He’s not so—” Noa made a face of displeasure. “ _Idealistic_. Or emotional. The only things he sees in people are what he can use to destroy them.”

“I’m not emotional.”

Noa snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You mean to tell me you’re so stoic and cool when you go sneaking off to see your brother every chance you get? When you get so worked up overdragons and fantasy stories—all that ancient Egyptian nonsense? Yes, Seto I do know about that—there are recording devices in almost every room here. Honestly I get _embarrassed_ on your behalf just _watching_ you exist. Seto, please—don’t lie to yourself—you’re weak. If you want to defeat my father you’re going to have to learn to think like him—and that means no room for—“ he gestured vaguely. “Whatever it is that you call yourself.”

Seto bit his lip. “Why are you telling me this?”

Noa frowned and looked away. It was several moments before he replied and it was the first time—Seto thought—he had been truly hesitant to speak. When he continued it was without his usual spite. “I didn’t sign up for this either, Seto. But I want to cut you down when you’re in your prime. There’s no point in beating someone who’s too soft to fight back.”


End file.
